Even if Harry Reid knew he didn't have 60 votes locked up, Reid made the right choice. Even if the White House worried that he didn't have 60 votes, he made the right call. The corporate centrists in our Party have too long grown accustomed to winning through refusal. Their refusal to even allow serious discussion of a Single Payer plan was just one recent example.
We are essentially in a state of war regarding health care. About as many Americans die annually as a consequence of poor or non existent health care insurance as died during the entire Viet Nam war. Our adversary, many would say enemy, is the private health care insurance cartel. They run the system that is responsible for those deaths. Not only do they run it, they profit off it, which makes them war profiteers in my book.
This matter is infinitely more grave than mere power politics. It far eclipses getting re-elected or defeated, being in the majority or minority in Congress. Those concerns effect how the ship of state is run, but protecting the lives of American citizens is the purpose of our ship of state. There is no business as usual during a state of war. For too long a war on Americans has raged undeclared as Senators posing as our protectors collected their special interest campaign contributions, while consigning thousands to their deaths through malign neglect.
It's time we declare a domestic war to protect American lives. That's what this is about and it must be declared for what it is. In war, one does not protect the interests of your adversary over those of your own people. One does not negotiate terms of surrender with a deadly foe as an alternative to engaging it in battle. It is time for the American people to ask of our elected leaders, whose side are you on? And it is time for the answer to be given. If Harry Reid sticks to his guns, the curtains will be pulled back and the answer to that revealed.
Life and Death and special interests. Let the battle lines be formed. The insurance industry had 40 years to get it right, the handwriting was on the wall after Medicare was established. Clean up your act or else. It is time for "or else", the trigger has long been pulled. The Republican Party essentially controlled the entire Federal government for 12 years, officially for much of that period. They had a chance to prove good faith, instead they proved the opposite. Let them filibuster now, and let our traitors be flushed out. Let the fight begin and let the truth be known. No more business as usual when the business being run is a Congressional brothel for corporate johns.
Harry, don't back down.