The woman in the above picture appeared recently in a New York Times article titled “In Kentucky, Health Law Helps Voters But Saps Votes.” It sums up with glaring clarity, two things that are particularly frustrating for for disenfranchised, cynical or apathetic voters: 1) a large number of people vote for the “image” or “brand” of a politician, seeming to completely ignore the fact that the politician they are supporting represents the opposite of what the voter believes or supports; and 2) politicians – especially democrats – are too big of cowards to stand up for what they believe, choosing to tell voters what they think the voter wants to hear, even if it is not the truth or what the politician believes. The result is entrenched, dysfunctional government that continues to represent the interests of giant corporations and extreme wealth, while the general population continues to fight against each other, failing to see who really controls the levers of power and keeps the standard of living in the United States of America on a steady decline towards Third World style poverty.
With mid-term elections coming up, the mainstream U.S. media gives daily updates on projections of which of the two corporate owned parties will have control of the Senate and House after the November votes are counted. The republicans already have control of the House of Representatives, and it doesn’t look like the democrats have much of a chance of retaking it. This is in large part due to the extreme gerrymandering of voting districts in each state, a process in which voting districts’ boundaries have been redrawn over and over to the careful calculations that guarantee for the most part, that the incumbent party maintains power. Although both parties have played a role in this, the result is that in the House, republicans have more seats than the total number of voters suggest that they should, much like a presidential candidate can win the Electoral votes and presidency while losing the popular vote. This distortion and disservice to democracy based on the simple principle of majority rule is passively accepted, with democrats grumbling and blaming the system while continuing to do nothing meaningful to change it. It has also blown up in the republicans’ faces, who at first seemed to benefit from this newfound means of controlling the House without popular support: the rise of the radical Tea Party, funded by billionaires across many states from Oligarchs like the Koch brothers. In republican primaries now, especially across the South, once thought “safe” seats are being challenged by a new class of clowns that have no interests in governing, only obstructionism. House Speaker John Boehner and recently defeated Eric Cantor have learned this lesson the hard way: nothing can get done, compromise being nearly impossible thanks the new freshman class of Tea Baggers that retook the House from democrats at a terrible cost to everyone.
The Senate operates a little differently, with each state getting two senators, determined by a state wide popular vote instead of a gerrymandered illusion. As a result, the democrats have had control of the Senate for sometime. But what has that been worth? Thanks to the democracy killing process known as the filibuster, in which 60 votes are required instead of 51 to pass legislation, very little has gotten done in this chamber either. When Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, who is up for reelection, said publicly after Barack Obama was first elected president, that his number one priority as Senate Minority Leader would be to deny President Obama a second term, he was not exaggerating. One would have thought at the time, with the world economy nearly collapsing thanks to the recklessness and corruption on Wall Street and in Washington, that his number one priority would have been to work with the newly elected president to solve the country’s problems. But instead, Mr. McConnell and his minority in the Senate invoked a historical, record breaking number of filibusters to derail any legislation from passing. If it were not for the democrats’ temporary “super majority” in the Senate in Obama’s first two years in office, nothing would have gotten passed, especially the Affordable Care Act.
Democrat Majority Leader Harry Reid, had more than one chance to use a procedural maneuver in the Senate to change the filibuster rule, but chose cowardice instead of leadership. As I have said more than once over the past few years and in my blogs, I believe his cowardice was rooted in his and other Senate democrats number one priority, to maintain some level of power when they inevitably lose control of the Senate. There were reports in the newspapers from time to time that Mr. Reid was so fed up with republican obstructionism, that he was on the verge of having the Senate change the fillibuster rule. But, it was also reported, that when he almost grew a set of balls, there were enough neutered, career politician democrats in the Senate that were against the change. Because they want to keep their near, do-nothing job with the right to obstruct and override majority rule, when they become the minority again. In other words, they value their right to do nothing when in the minority, over their opportunity to do what is right when they are in the majority.
This gets us to the important point of, what does it matter, who is in control? Well, we can start with the very narrow field of the new healthcare law. Obama Care, as it is generally called in the public domain, or The Affordable Health Care Act, has been the whipping board of Obama critics since it’s conception. Well, it’s actual conception began with the republican idea of keeping our dysfunctional, ineffective, super-expensive health care system in the hands of the private health insurance companies. The republican conception that was eventually adopted by the Obama administration, began as Romney Care in Massachusetts. Most Americans favored a single payer system like all other industrialized, wealthy countries in the world enjoy, where everyone is covered universally. Many liberals and progressives, myself included, were furious that Obama’s team immediately abandoned any thoughts of pursuing such a permanent solution to our healthcare crisis, but in the end, most of us thought, the new system is better than the old one, even though the same vulture insurance companies are still profiting from acting as a go-between for patients and doctors, and still causing the massive, costly, confusing pile of paperwork. But, there are now new consumer protections, such as not allowing insurance companies to deny coverage based on pre-existing conditions, no lifetime caps, etc. The benefits are numerous and life changing for millions. Despite the trouble plagued rollout of the national health exchange, millions of Americans have now gotten more affordable coverage, thanks to more competition among insurers, and subsidies from the federal government to help middle and lower income people afford private insurance. The law also helped expand Medicaid by expanding the poverty line qualifying people for it. Unfortunately for millions of Americans still living in republican controlled states, many governors have declined the expansion of Medicaid for their state, even though Washington has offered to pay for the cost of new patients for the first three years, and 90 percent until 2020. Out of spite for President Obama, many lower income people, still too poor to afford private insurance, but not poor enough according to their governors or state legislators, many of these people will suffer and die.
That people will tolerate this is shameful. That voters will continue to vote for it, even if it is themselves that need health care, is baffling and infuriating.
Take Robin Evans, a 49 year old Kentucky resident in the New York Times article, who reportedly works at an EBay warehouse making 9 dollars an hour, who recently got Medicaid in Kentucky after going uninsured with multiple health issues for many years. Fortunately for Mrs. Evans, Kentucky has a democratic governor, and even though she is quoted in the article as saying that she is “tickled to death” to have Medicaid finally, she will not be voting for democrats. Her brilliant reasoning: “Born and raised Republican,” she said of herself. “I ain’t planning on changing now.”
Here is a link to the article in which the intellectual giant is quoted from:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/17/us/politics/kentucky-elections-obama-health-care-act.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=HpSumSmallMediaHigh&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news
With stunning ignorance or bigotry, or whatever would motivate such a dumbass redneck like Mrs. Evans, pictured above, to still vote for Kentucky’s Senator Mitch McConnell, who has campaigned over and over about wanting to get rid of ObamaCare, is enough to make you want to bang your head into a fencepost you can’t win an argument with.
But surely most people like Robin Evans can be reasoned with. More maddening, however, is many democrats, especially in red and Southern states, are too big of cowards or too pathetic to even muster a fight with the truth on their side. Mr. McConnell’s female opponent, Alison Grimes, who once seemed to have a decent chance of defeating him, is running away from ObamaCare, and instead airing television commercials of her shooting a gun, while proudly proclaiming that she is not Obama, and loves the coal industry. The motto for worthless democrats like her seems to be “if you can’t beat them, and are too scared to debate ideas, then imitate them.” Since the airing of her manly shooting of a gun, a pissing match war of meaningless words and gestures has resulted in Mrs. Grimes challenging Mr. McConnell to a contest at a shooting range. To think that she will be able to persuade voters that she is more macho and as big of a supporter of no gun laws as Mitch McConnell, instead of making the easy, uncomplicated argument that ObamaCare is good for Kentucky, with thousands of examples, proves that she is unfit to call herself a democrat, unfit to lead, unfit for office, and has absolutely no chance of unseating Mitch McConnell.
Here is a link to her tv ad, copy and paste to your browser for a good laugh and cry for the monumental stupidity of American politics:
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/09/alison-lundergan-grimes-shooting-ad-110954.html
So this is the best Democrats can do in red states? If it is, and Americans are willing to hand the Senate back over to the Republicans, then we might as well go hunting with former Vice President Dick Cheney, and let him shoot us in the face. It wouldn’t be much dumber than the recently insured Robin Evans saying that she wasn’t about to change her republican voting ways now, no matter how illogical and detrimental to her well being it is.
I can understand a voter not supporting either of the two corrupted political parties and choosing to vote for an independent or third party. But to think there is no difference between the two pathetic parties is a dangerous position, for even though those differences may be small, as the new healthcare law demonstrates, it can be the difference between life and death.
At the risk of talking down to my audience that may disagree with me, I have to end this with a recent quote from Bill Maher:
“I understand why the richest 1% vote Republican, they deserve those votes. They represent the richest 1% perfectly. Anybody else who does, just corporate America’s useful idiots.”