Drawing key lessons from the failure of Obamacare

[girl gone mad]

Drawing key lessons from the failure of Obamacare
By TED RALL
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/rss/eo20090826tr.html">The Japan Times

"What worries me: time and time again," writes Brendan Skwire in the Philadelphia Weekly about the circuses that are currently passing for Democrats' town hall meetings on health care, " the needs of the stupid and disingenuous are not only treated as valid concerns, but as the greatest concerns."

Well, yes. This being the United States, one of the most gleefully anti-intellectual nations on Earth, stupid people aren't pathetic dolts to be pitied or perhaps sent to a reeducation camp. They're the shining example we're supposed to look up to. Obamacare, whatever it is or was going to be once the president saw fit to share it with the public, is dead.

That it would die a dog's death was predictable, so predictable that I predicted it a couple of months ago. "No one is going to call their congressman, much less march in the streets, to demand action for a half-measure — or, in this case, a quarter-measure," I wrote then. "Without public pressure to push back against drug and insurance company lobbyists, nothing will change." The latest Rasmussen Poll shows most Americans are against Obama's vague "public option," 53 percent to 42.

There was public pressure, all right — from the right. Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity stirred up a hornet's nest of frenzied morons, throwing around words like "fascist" and "Nazi" as if they didn't know that they referred to themselves, which of course they didn't. They turned out, bigger and louder than the president's supporters, who were handicapped by (a) not exactly knowing what they were being shouted over about and (b) not really caring that much because there wasn't much in it for them.

I pay $800 a month for private health insurance. That's $10,000 a year, or about $14,000 in pre-tax earnings. If Obama had proposed European-style socialized medicine, wherein doctors and nurses are government employees, I would have stood to have been $14,000 a year richer. As for workers who get health care insurance through their employers, Obama could have required all bosses to pass along the savings by giving their employees a $14,000-a-year raise.

$14,000 is definitely motivation enough to pry me away from my usual Netflix evening in order to outshout the rednecks at my local town hall. How about you? Now Obamacare is dead. The good part is that, because it wouldn't have made much difference in our lives anyway, it doesn't much matter.

Still, there are political lessons to be learned: Lesson One: Violence Works. The more rambunctious rightwingers showed up with assault rifles outside halls where the president was speaking. Can you imagine what would have happened if lefties had brought their AK-47s to anti-Iraq war rallies? The cops would have killed them. Their friends and relatives would have disappeared into some Bushie secret prison in Romania. Or maybe the Bush junta would have gotten so scared the war would never have happened.

The death of half-assed Obamacare is merely the latest evidence of a fact that the left, in thrall to militant pacifism, refuses to see. Only two means exist in order to effect change: violence, or the credible threat thereof. The charged atmosphere of imminent violence permeating the town hall meetings intimidated liberal wimps from the grassroots to the Oval Office.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/rss/eo20090826tr.html">More...

[babylonsister]

1. Did Ted Rall give us a link to the new bill? nt

[Davis_X_Machina]

2. "Obama could have required all bosses to pass along the savings...

.... by giving their employees a $14,000-a-year raise."

That was the best thing about not going through with the American Revolution years ago -- we thankfully still have a monarch who can act decisively.

[SemiCharmedQuark]

3. So he's promoting violence and intimidation??

No thanks.

[Davis_X_Machina]

6. But it's *our* violence and intimdation...so it's O.K.

It's like the French Revolution never happened, or was never written about. Ted would have been an excellent Jacobin.

[SemiCharmedQuark]

7. I'm sorry that this got posted in the economy forum. I wish more people could see it.

I'd like to see what other DUers think of it.

[babylonsister]

9. Go for it! nt

[aquart]

4. Didn't intimidate me.

But then, I'm descended from communists, the militant wing of the left. I'm related to one of the Peekskill bodyguards who stood between Paul Robeson and the mob. My mother stood up to a New York mayor and got a written apology (hell, so did I). My father lay down in front of a truck full of scabs.

This wimpy feel-good image of the dilettante left is crap. WE FUCKING ORGANIZED UNIONS. We registered voters in the deep South. We got women the vote.

What HIDE-ME-FROM-THE-BIG-BAD-CHANGE! rightwinger ever had that much guts? That's why those cowards need those guns.

[Teaser]

5. Ted Rall needs to contact Dr. Emmet Brown

cause something is clearly wrong with his alternate reality time machine

[Fridays Child]

8. Ted Rall's brand is doom.

nt