Decisions, decisions. My area congressman finally came around to making one on the health care legislation, and it was to vote with Boehner, Cantor, and Pence. I could see if there was some strong principle behind this choice – for example, the fact that the bill is flawed, that it gives too much to the insurance companies, that it doesn’t have a strong public option, that it is not a single payer plan, etc. But his reasoning appears to be based solely on political calculus. He’s reading the polling, and it’s showing a large majority of his district turning against the bill. Now, this isn’t too surprising, since the airwaves have been flooded with attack ads over the past month in particular, many sponsored by the national Chamber of Commerce (the folks who helped bring you our lack of a national health insurance plan in the first place). And, of course, they’ve stripped out some of the most popular aspects of the original plan in an attempt to please people who would never vote for the legislation in any form.

From what I’ve seen, though, the numbers he’s looking at were gathered from a poll sponsored by – wait for it – the Chamber of Commerce! I’m sure that didn’t contain any inherent bias. Whatever the source, Mike Arcuri is trying to appeal to people who will never consider voting for him… and in so doing, he’s alienating the only people who are ever likely to vote for him. So this effort at self-preservation is really self-defeating. Without the dedicated Democratic cadre turning out in November, dialing the phones, driving people to the polls, and actually going out and voting, where are his votes going to come from? In an off-year election, those votes matter much more than during presidential election years.

Mike’s take on this as that it should be done incrementally. Note to Congressman Arcuri: this is doing it incrementally. It would be a mistake to think of this bill as the last word on national health care. It is merely a stake in the ground, establishing the principle of a national system. Yeah, I think it’s a mess, and I’ve said so. It excludes far too many people. It preserves the profits of large sectors of our money-obsessed health care delivery system. It lacks the virtue of a public option for people who simply cannot get a decent plan in the private market. But the alternative is the wild west system (or lack of same) we have now. That is clearly unsustainable. Voting against an admittedly imperfect solution simply to please people like Don Jeror and other “tea party” basket cases is farcical, at best. 

So, what the hell. Sorry, Mike. But people like me might just sit on our hands this November. Either way, we’ll get somebody who supports the Boehner agenda.

luv u,

jp