The bill’s flawed. The process was ugly. There’s still a lot of work to be done and who knows what will happen in November.
But I don’t care.
They did it!
They did it.
Nothing like this has happened in my memory.
I was too young to be paying attention to the last great Progressive legislative victories on Civil Rights and Medicare and Medicaid.
Since then all the victories have been in one way or another occasions more for sadness than celebration.
Ending the war in Vietnam, running Richard Nixon out of town, saving Bill Clinton.
Even preventing George Bush from destroying Social Security. That was holding the line. Which has pretty much been the Progressive record for the last thirty years. Holding the line against Right Wing Corporatist and Right Wing Christianist assaults on the New Deal, the Great Society, Civil Rights---for African-Americans, women, gays, immigrants, and just about everybody who isn’t “us”---and the Social Contract.
Holding the line and making smaller-scale improvements to programs already in place, expanding rights and benefits incrementally---although much of that work was left to the courts---and undoing some of the harm done by stupid and mean-spirited Republican legislative and executive and, lately, judicial decisions.
Progressivism, at least in Washington, became a defense of the status quo.
This is different. This is progress.
We can argue later about how much or how little.
But the bill, soon to become the law, is significant for what it signifies as much or more than for what it actually does.
It is the first time since the passage of the minimum wage and child labor laws and workplace safety regulations that it’s been said in law that profits do not matter as much as a human being’s life.
I know. It doesn’t say profits don’t matter. But it does say that from here on out no one will die so that people working in the insurance industry can get their Christmas bonuses.
It will take a few years before that’s what actually happens. But think about it. For a hundred and thirty years, the guiding principle of the party of Big Business has been that the right of the privileged few to make gobs of money trumps the rights of the rest of us to anything else, a decent wage, a decent job that doesn’t kill us or make us sick, a secure old age, clean water, clean air, food that doesn’t poison us, and, when we or our kids get sick, the right to get treatment without having someone else decide whether or not we can get it based on whether or not it is profitable for them.
And this victory is significant because it is a significant defeat for the the forces of Right Wing reaction.
No movement whose adherents spit on people they disagree with, let alone on United States Congressmen, call anyone nigger, let alone heroes of the Civil Rights movement, jeer and cheer when one of their own calls another human being a faggot, believe that they are the only real Americans, the only ones whose votes and opinions count, the only ones with rights, and raise signs and banners advocating violence and murder just because they’re not getting their way can be allowed to get its way. No politician who cheerleads for that movement and eggs its followers on and stokes their anger and encourages them to believe that the proper functioning of republican democracy is illegitimate and the duly-elected President of the United States is their enemy can be allowed to go home to his or her district and brag about how they helped win another one for the cause of Right Wing Reaction.
It’s a flawed bill. There’s a lot of work left to do. The challenge to women’s rights is serious and dismaying. The fight isn’t over, on health care, reproductive rights, or any other front. As Peter Daou says, the fundamental dynamic hasn’t changed and the “GOP and rightwing attack machine will [continue to] do everything possible to destroy Obama's presidency”.
And don’t think for a minute that John Roberts and his fellow Republican Party stooges on the Supreme Court aren’t already looking forward to their chance to declare the whole thing unconstitutional.
And like I said, who knows what’s going to happen in November, except to say that whatever happens, it’s going to happen after a rough and ugly campaign.
Bur right now, I don’t care.
They did it.
They did it!
Last night I said on Twitter God bless Nancy Pelosi and one of my followers said that he appreciated the sentiment but he doesn’t believe in God. I replied that I don’t believe in Him either, but Nancy Pelosi does and at the moment whatever Nancy Pelosi says goes with me. God bless her!
And God rest Teddy Kennedy.
__________________
Related reading:
From Crooks and Liars, Ten immediate benefits of HCR.
From Kathy Flake, Armageddon. Next door to Waterloo.
From Andrew Tobias, A Great Day for America.
A Progressive dissent from Jane Hamsher, submitted by regular reader Mac Magillicuddy.
Paul Krugman: Fear Strikes Out.
Atrios’ Great Big Health Care Reform Post.
Adam Serwer, The American Prospect: A Diversity Win.
More as I find ‘em throughout the day.
God rest, Teddy - yes. But maybe not just rest. Don't you hope there's a space for celebratory dancing and singing (because Teddy was a full-throated and joyful singer) - or the vibrations thereof - wherever it is that soul energy goes when it leaves a body? Because I want to picture that happy, healthy energy as an antidote to the choking, ignorant fear that has haunted and poisoned this process.
I have actually felt a few tears of gratitude forming as I have been reading the reports today. For exactly the reasons you state.
Posted by: Victoria | Monday, March 22, 2010 at 12:54 PM
I'm glad it passed; yes I am. And it's true, it's the best thing to come out of Congress since the 70s. But that's a pretty low bar, so I don't think we should get so carried away that we forget that this should be considered a starting point to real reform of the health care system -- the first step down that slippery slope to a sensible universal, single-payer, tax-funded health care system [may it soon come to pass!]. In the midst of all the celebrating, though, we should remember, and remind Democrats whenever possible, that women's rights were held hostage by the Stupak/Nelson grandstanding, and because of it, low-income women now face even more barriers to receiving health care they need and wish to have. Things remain the same for women who may need an abortion and have the money to pay for it (that would be everyone in Bart Stupak's class), but poor women are expected to pay for their greater access to health insurance (a good thing) with their right to control their bodies (a very, very bad thing). I hate to sound churlish, but I plan to be reminding any Democrat or Democratic organization that asks me for money that they owe American women something because they failed to stand up for our right to choose this time. I think progressives and liberals need to start asking when President Obama plans make good on his commitment to sign the Freedom of Choice Act?
Posted by: Amanda | Monday, March 22, 2010 at 02:54 PM
Lance, Victoria, Amanda: go read Jim Fallows's blog post from yesterday. As he says: "the significance of the vote is moving the United States . . . TOWARD a system in which people can assume they will have health-care coverage. Period."
Posted by: Linkmeister | Monday, March 22, 2010 at 05:00 PM
Linkmeister, I had read Fallows before and I took his comments to be positive: "Why This Moment Matters" and he talks about the moment AS significant. I want single-payer. I think we will have, at the very least, a public option one day, not too far away. And I think this is one giant step toward that. Better begins now, and I am happy for that. - Today, NPR did a one minute or so list of what Americans get and when from this bill. It all sounds so reasonable. I just don't see how we go backward from here, now that the conditions are set. But yes, it's just the first HUGE start of a new garden. Lots of planting and weeding to go. That's enough for me to rejoice.
Posted by: Victoria | Monday, March 22, 2010 at 07:07 PM
I'm of mixed minds on this. On the one hand, it will benefit many people who were otherwise suffering, and it confirmed the GOP as the racist demagogues they are.
On the other, it was passed on the principle that women's health and bodily autonomy are acceptable sacrifices for the good of the greater public, and the debate has deepened the confusion between access to health care and access to health insurance. Those set very bad precedents for future discussions of health in this country.
Posted by: Rana | Monday, March 22, 2010 at 08:28 PM
Two crucial principles -- that the government has the right to tell insurance companies what to do, and that all Americans are obliged to help each other -- are expressed in this legislation. That is what the insurance companies and the republicans were so afraid of. I am very impressed that Pelosi and Obama got this done, even if they had to throw abortion under the bus to do it. Pro-choice policies can always rise again -- even then, the right to an abortion was not abridged, as I understand it, only the right to get an insurance company to pay for it, and I think fundraising around this issue will actually provide an opportunity for pro-choice organizations -- but this was the only opportunity that the democrats had to pass health insurance reform. I'm so glad they took it.
Posted by: CathiefromCanada | Tuesday, March 23, 2010 at 01:49 AM
CathiefromCanada, I wish I could be as sanguine about the future of abortion rights in this country. From my perspective, living in a state with ONE abortion provider for the whole state, there are already so many hurdles blocking poor and working-class women from obtaining this purportedly legal medical procedure that it might as well be illegal for most of those who need it. Adding the burden of federally sanctioned (even mandated) non-coverage for it, a burden that does not exist for any other legal medical procedure, doesn't strike me as a sign that pro-choice policies are on the Democrats' priority list now, or in the future.
Posted by: Rana | Tuesday, March 23, 2010 at 02:28 PM