I've had it. I'm done. I have reached my limit on capitulation, corporatism, cronyism, and stupid.
The Democratic Party is facing a do-or-die moment. It has a supermajority control of the legislature, and, oh yeah, the White House. There is nothing the Democratic Party should not be able to accomplish.
If it wants to.
National, socialized -- yeah, socialized -- health care meets every supposed ideal of the Democratic Party:
Affordable, Quality Health Care Coverage for All Americans? Check.
We believe that quality and affordable health care is a basic right.
THE 2008 DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL PLATFORM
But instead of delivering its promises, the Democratic party is now being held hostage by the insurance industry, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the mouth-breathing, half-literate, flat-earther wingnut screamers who want government to stay out of their Medicare.
And I have fucking had it.
Let's just take a look at some other pretty talk the Democratic party gave us last year, when it needed our money and our hard work and our votes.
We will end the outrage of unaffordable, unavailable health care...
But generating truly shared prosperity is only possible if we also address our most significant long-run challenges like the rising cost of health care, energy,and education.
From health care to pensions, from unemployment insurance to paid leave, we need to modernize our policies in order to provide working Americans the tools they need to meet new realities and challenges.
In meeting after meeting, people expressed moral outrage with a health care crisis that leaves millions of Americans–including nine million children–without health insurance and millions more struggling to pay rising costs for poor quality care.
Ensuring quality, affordable health care for every single American is essential to children’s education, workers’ productivity and businesses’ competitiveness. We believe that covering all is not just a moral imperative, but is necessary to making our health system workable and affordable. Doing so would end cost-shifting from the uninsured,promote prevention and wellness, stop insurance discrimination, help eliminate health care disparities, and achieve savings through competition, choice, innovation, and higher quality care. While there are different approaches within the Democratic Party about how best to achieve the commitment of covering every American, with everyone in and no one left out, we stand united to achieve this fundamental objective through the legislative process.
A moral imperative.
And yet there is a loud voice of those in our party who believe that the real imperative is to protect the insurance industry instead of the people. The insurance industry doesn't need a seat at the table; it needs to be put out of business completely because it is immoral -- yeah, immoral -- to profit from denying health care to people in need.
Is the Democratic Party better than the Republican Party? Yeah. The Democratic Party does not embrace its most violent, paranoid, pathologically dishonest "leaders" (a.k.a., bloggers and talk show hosts). Cindy Sheehan did not become the face of the Democratic Party back during the dark days of the Bush years.
And remember the amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008, tsk-tsking MoveOn.org's ad about General "Betray Us" ?
To express the sense of the Senate that General David H. Petraeus, Commanding General, Multi-National Force-Iraq, deserves the full support of the Senate and strongly condemn personal attacks on the honor and integrity of General Petraeus and all members of the United States Armed Forces
That passed with the enthusiastic votes of an awful lot of Democrats.
The Republicans don't do that. They celebrate stupidity. They embrace violence. They bow in fear to a man who wants the president to fail. They even bow in fear to the tens of angry bloggers and teabaggers who think that President Obama's birth certificate, birth announcements in two local newspapers, and plenty of testimony doesn't prove a thing about where the president was born.
So yes, the Democrats are better than the Republicans.
But not by much.
That's not to condemn the entire party. Because there are a lot of good people in the Democratic Party. There are a lot of voices in the House and Senate who speak truth to power, even from the inside of those oh-so-hallowed walls of power.
They can stay.
But the others? The ones who are selling us out? The ones who are bending over for Sarah Palin's Facebook page?
Well, I've got one message for you:
FUCK YOU.
I may not be your biggest contributor, but I'm fairly certain I'm not alone. All those calls I made last fall, even for the down-ticket Democrats I didn't like very much? All those small online donations I made every time you asked me to?
Yeah, well, that ain't gonna happen again.
You told us you needed control of Congress in order to stop the Republicans. Fine. We gave it to you.
But that wasn't enough, because then you said you needed 60 seats in the Senate. Fine. We gave that to you too.
Never mind that George Bush was able to completely remake America with a fucking minority in Congress, and then a tiny little sliver of a majority. You need huge numbers to be able to stand up to those oh-so-scary Republicans? Fine. You got 'em.
But now? Now you have to take your marching orders from the idiots who literally think "end of life care" means "kill granny"? Are you fucking kidding me? Do you not realize that this ridiculous capitulation gives them all the power and further motivation they need to keep calling you with death threats, vandalizing your offices, and screaming in your faces?
Stop pretending the opposition has valid points to make. It doesn't. Stop pretending that their lies and distortion have any place in this discussion. They don't. Stop acting as if continued sacrifices to the screamers will end with a bipartisan bill. It won't.
Get it right, Democrats, and get it done. Or I'm done with you.