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So You Say You Want a Health Care Revolution

Posted: 22 Dec 2009 07:36 PM PST

Beginning with a pledge to make health care more accessible to
millions of Americans, Obama and his Democratic allies on Capitol Hill
have instead made millions of Americans into serfs of the insurance
companies who paid for their Senate seats. Not only did Obama predictably
dump on seniors, a demographic that didn't vote for him, but he managed to
stab the same youth vote that got him to where he is today in the back by
forcing them to buy health insurance in order to subsidize his social
welfare programs.

The combination of Obama's sense of political invulnerability
and a Democratic congress desperate to stave off midterm election defeats
during a depression brought us this far. And pork got us the rest of the
way. And what the Democratic congress got is a final bundle of pork to
take with them on their way out the door. Nancy Pelosi and those Senators
and Congressman ensconced in safe liberal parts of the country may be
safe, though even their constituents are increasingly disgusted with them,
but their congressional majority that was built on conservative Democrats
is very shaky indeed.

While the White House has kept trying to sell
the spin of a divided Republican party caught between the moderates and
the extremists, the Democrats have fought their own mini-civil war to
demonstrate their basic intolerance, but the health care debate is likely
to demonstrate that the progressives in the Democratic party are the same
unprincipled political hacks as their more centrist counterparts. It
really doesn't matter whether you're Ben Nelson or Al Franken, Alan
Grayson or John Tanner. It all comes down to the same thing, as a
dysfunctional party which tried to use an economic recession as the
backdrop for a power grab has been caught with its hand in the cookie jar
by an increasingly exasperated public.

Every compromise made to
push through ObamaCare has only highlighted the incoherent hypocrisy of
the Democratic party in selling out every section of their base, ignoring
the incredible mountain of public debt already created by Obama's
senseless spending sprees and demonstrating that the part of the bill that
they were willing to fight and die for last week, turned out to be the
part of the bill that no one needed after all. Forget reading the bill, as
it turned out no one could even manage to read through the amendments.

The states are not happy. Liberal state governors and mayors are
protesting the bribes that Nebraska and Louisiana got, and arguing that
they were punished for providing health care. Conservative state
politicians are fighting against the imposition of the plan, with South
Carolina's Attorney General already launching an investigation.
Progressive activists and bloggers are trying to feed their lump of coal
to the firebreathers and telling them it's a sugar plum. And the Blue Dogs
are either retiring or switching parties, which makes the Democratic
battle in the 2010 midterm elections that much more of an uphill battle.

Obama began his term by posturing as
FDR, but declaring "Mission Accomplished" on the stimulus plan while the
economy was being flushed has made him less popular than Bush was in his
second term. ObamaCare was supposed to fix all that, but as it turned out
people wanted jobs, not a giant government rationed health care plan. Not
getting the message, congress has kept pushing forward on the theory that
since they're screwed either way, they might as well try and deliver
something they can point to as an accomplishment in 2010. It's not exactly
statesmanship, but it is politics as usual.

The resulting chaos has
however not only made an already unpopular congress, unpopular... it has
helped make Obama extremely unpopular. And every dirty trick and foul
consequence of ObamaCare, from protests over mandatory coverage, to the
escalating size of congressional pork in the aftermath of Ben Nelson's 100
million dollar bribe and the "Louisiana Purchase", to the death
panel subsection that cannot be repealed, to the shouts of glee at
insurance companies as their stocks soar on the news that Congress has
just put a gun to the head of every American and marched them down to
their local insurance office-- will come home to roost at a Democratic
White House and Capitol Hill.

After this the idea of selling any
kind of big tent party is a farce. The only way Conservative Democrats can
win in 2010 is by distancing themselves from Obama and their own party,
sometimes literally as Alabama Congressman Parker Griffith has done by
actually switching parties, or by staying officially within the ranks yet
detaching themselves from most Democratic policies.With the Democratic
left exposed as a sham and the Democratic right facing a choice between
defection and retirement, there isn't a whole lot for the party left to
run on.

With ObamaCare, the party has reached into its hat and
pulled out the largest social welfare program since the days of LBJ. And
that has made them about as popular as LBJ. Out of touch with the concerns
of ordinary Americans and utterly tone deaf to the national dialogue,
Obama still continues his soft shoe routine as Jester in Chief, phoning in
to the radio show of his close ally former Virginia Governor and DNC
Chairman Tim Kaine, who is supposed to help the party hold on in
conservative parts of the country. But considering that Kaine couldn't
even help Creigh Deeds hold on to the state, he might prove to be a little
underqualified for the job.

Virginia and New Jersey were the first bellwethers of a
shifting political tide that might leave the Democratic party as the Party
of Chicago, Detroit and Berkeley. Obama, the party's charismatic hedge
against inflation, has thus far barely managed to hold on to the last
tattered shreds of his former popularity. The party is then left with a
choice between going for broke as they did with ObamaCare, enacting their
big picture socialist programs and not caring who they alienate, backing
off and trying to win over the public again, or grabbing the first plane
out to Venezuela for a loving welcome from left wing dictator Hugo Chavez.

Throughout it all, the Democrats have failed to grasp that their
political agenda is at odds with any hope of retaining their popularity.
Now in the aftermath of the ObamaCare boondoggle, the choice may be
clearer than ever for them. They can either have power on the people's
terms or be a minority party again on their own terms. With ObamaCare they
have chosen the latter and they are welcome to it.