I hate to say it, but thank you, Pelosi and Obama

Last week's Health Care Reform passage was a long time coming, and really only amounts to a tiny step in the right direction. It could have been a lot better. I for one would have loved a full-on European-style socialist single-payer system. I feel that's eventually where we're going to have to go to meet the needs of the people, but it'll be lots of kicking and screaming battles, with tiny little hops of progress between them.

I found last weeks small victory somewhat unpalatable partly because it was so small (by the time it passed, it was packed with pork and concessions for the Insurance and Pharmaceutical industries), and partly because it was achieved by Obama and Pelosi. I've detested Nancy Pelosi since she took Bush's impeachment "off the table" in the name of making the government run smoothly. She said she wasn't going to let the government grind to a halt like it did during the whole Ken Starr investigation of Clinton.

To that I had two counter-arguments:

1. While that desire to see government function properly and without disruption is quite noble, it was naïve to think that the Republican obstructionism of the later Clinton years wasn't now just a standard part of the playbook that they would unleash the next time a Democrat sat in high office. I felt she was hamstringing her own party by forcing it to hold itself to an unreasonable standard of behavior, one which the opposition would never hold themselves to. Don't do the Repubs any favors that you know they wouldn't do for you.
   
2. War crimes ain't blow jobs (and vice versa), and impeaching an evil President for war crimes is the definition of "government functioning properly and without disruption", even if everything else takes a back-burner while that's in motion.
   

This past year has proven me right on the first point at least. Last year set a congressional record for the number of cloture votes to break fillibusters, and the first three months of this year have been even worse. Here's a nice chart that lays it out. The Republicans have been obstructing at record levels, essentially hitting our government with a "slow-down strike" (which is pretty bizarre given the well-known Republican hatred of Unions).

So, for the past couple years, I've been sitting around feeling all contemptuous of Nancy Pelosi, and for the last year of it I've been occasionally allowing myself a smug "I told you so!" Of course, I didn't believe in her. I thought she was a defeatist at best, a corporate shill or even evil conspirator at the worst. Now, I may in fact be right about the later in regards to certain elements, but she's acquitted herself of the defeatist accusation, at least. She stuck to her guns, and forced this bill through the most horrendous obstructionism our government has seen since the 1870s.

I didn't believe in Obama, either. I voted for him, but then had to watch him concede ground like crazy for his first year in office. It was shameful and disgusting, and looked all the more so because I had no faith in him. I didn't expect him or Pelosi to see this Health Care bill through. I remembered the first 100 days of the Clintons, who actually made great strides in Washington in the opening months of their administration, only to have that momentum broken in the fight over health care. Seeing that we were fighting the same battle again 16 years later, I didn't think Obama would be able to pull it off.

So, I'm not saying the bill (now law) was perfect. There's a long way to go to make it what we need, and it's clear that the Rethuglicans will continue to fight hard for the next 3 years+ to keep anything else progressive from coming out of Washington. But, I have to admit, I now suspect Pelosi and Obama will actually give them a fight worth watching after all, and that's pretty fucking awesome. In the words of Bill Maher at the Huffington Post:

Two months ago, conservative Fred Barnes wrote, "The health care bill is dead with not the slightest prospect of resurrection." Well, if it's dead, you just got your ass kicked by a zombie named Nancy Pelosi. Seriously, the last time a Democrat showed balls like that John Edwards' girlfriend was filming it. Make all the botox jokes and she-shops-too-much jokes you want, but this is the biggest political victory a woman has ever achieved in America.