This past weekend, Mama Bonk asked me what I thought about the Massachusetts special election for Teddy Kennedy's seat. I think my answer surprised her. "I think we're going to lose," I said. "And I think we should." Jon Stewart recently got to some of why I have espoused this view:
If this lady loses, the health care reform bill that the beloved late senator considered his legacy, will die. And the reason it will die... is because if Coakley loses, Democrats will only have an 18 vote majority in the Senate, which is more than George W. Bush ever had in the Senate when did whatever the fcuk he wanted to.
If Senate Democrats are ever going to get anything done, I think they'd be better off at this point if they didn't have the paradoxical covers to run to, between the security blanket of your "60 votes," which by the way they NEVER had, to the wussy excuse we always seem to hear, that of "we don't have the votes." Well, then, stop screwing around and blow up the filibuster. Duh. The problem, and I intend to write in-length on this tomorrow, is that we've had a presidential candidate campaign at least implicitly as a bold progressive who has governed as a chip off The Great Triangulator and a Senate majority only too happy to follow his lead. But people didn't turn out to vote for timid progressives—in fact, being a timid progressive is like the worst political position one can hope to maintain. Maybe if this party gets kicked in the shin it'll rise up and have to kick some ass for a change. Maybe.
No comments:
Post a Comment