What utter nonsense.
Take, for example, the following comment, which follows a piece at Washington Monthly online on a Virginia Republican who, in the face of overheated rhetoric (the feds are gang-raping America), rather than confronting it and the person who said it, seems to agree with the sentiment.
The really scary thing is the potential snowball effect. Neo-Klan loudmouths talk rape, murder and revolution, rightwing politicans coddle them, Democratic supporters become disillusioned and don't vote due to Republican stonewalling and Democratic wimpiness, Republicans take power, fear the Baggers will turn on them if they don't deliver, and produce a fascist government they may not even believe in. I know Grassley doesn't, for one; like so many of them he's just terrified of a primary challenge from the right. But would he object to being part of a dictatorship? No, he'd love to be up on the balcony wearing the armband. Dark days, today and tomorrow.(emphasis added)
"Dark days"? Ridiculous. Last time I checked, the Democrats have 58 seats in the United States Senate, with the two independent members caucusing with them. The House majority is larger than any the Republicans had in their twelve years in control from 1994 through 2006. And while it is indeed true that his favorability numbers are falling, Pres. Obama is the first Democratic President since Lyndon Johnson to enjoy such wide support for so long after his election, and pretty much across the board. Indeed, even Ronald Reagan had serious problems in favorability as the recession of the early 1980's - a very different animal to be sure - dragged on and on. In many ways, Barack Obama is by far the most successful American President with the American people in a very long time.
Yet, the election of Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress, a Democratic President, a resetting of our national policy agenda away from tax cuts in perpetuity for the wealthy and the freeing of any restrictions on capital and financial transactions does not seem to satisfy. The attention the press paid over the August Congressional recess to the Tea Party movement has only fed that particular beast, to be sure; the persistence of Sarah Palin in our national consciousness is the one gift, sad to say, the McCain campaign has bequeathed the American public. We face climate skeptics, evolution skeptics, even birth-skeptics who believe that Barack Obama not only was not born in the United States, but that a massive conspiracy has hidden this truth from the American people. Liberals, for all their claims to a greater clarity of vision and adherence to the principles of science and understanding, are actually surprised that these notions, all easily proven to be factually inaccurate, nevertheless survive and even thrive in the fever swamps of the right.
With the persistence of these imaginary threats, we also have the rough road health care reform has faced. The emergence of a few folks as opponents - Olympia Snowe and Ben Nelson; Joe Lieberman and Bart Stupak - has generated so much concern that there is the widespread belief that it will fail, to the detriment not only of the millions of uninsured Americans, but the electoral and political fortunes of the Democrats. Now, obviously, since the world is imperfect, this is a live possibility. Yet, it seems that quite a few minds have already been made up that even the bill before the Congress right now is so awful, so devoid of merit - the magic phrase "public option" is on everyone's lips, even if few seem to understand that it really is nothing more than Medicare for everybody; which is why (surprise, surprise) the insurance industry is opposed to it - that passage in a form even somewhat similar would be tantamount to defeat.
Now, I have issues with the way health care reform has been done. It seems to me the best things the sponsors of the legislation could have done would be to do a quick study of the way the varieties of public health insurance work in industrialized countries then cherry-pick the ideas and programs that best fit the United States. This isn't rocket science, and far too many people seem to believe we as a nation are reinventing the wheel.
My larger complaint right now, however, is with those who seem to believe that disagreement on this issue is not just error-prone, but somehow immoral. The language of rights, already overburdened, has been weighted down with the addition of health care. Without explanation, without defense, with more moral fervor than intellectual muscle, liberals and leftists are demanding opponents stand aside because health care is a right and the passage of health care reform is a moral imperative.
Are they so afraid of actual debate they would silence opponents by painting them as immoral, in much the way the whole "death panel" nonsense suggested that behind the Democratic designs on health care reform was a kind of eugenics? The fear and loathing among liberals has become, in many instances - far too many - a mirror of the delusions among those on the right. We cannot have a dispassionate discussion on the merits, accepting the good faith and will of our opponents. Indeed, the entire social and cultural basis of our democracy - our pluralist acceptance of difference as a boon, with those differences to be negotiated constantly, including on issues of power - is not only forgotten, it seems to be a matter of scorn.
I suppose mine is one of those namby-pamby voices of moderation, a phony liberal who would surrender in the face of opposition. Since my complain, however, is that far too many liberals have surrendered, not so much because of the merits of disagreement but its reality, I find this difficult to swallow. One of the merits, to me at any rate, of the Obama Administration, is the respect the President shows for the inherent limits of the office, including a refusal to act as if he is "legislator-in-chief". He has made his legislative program known, offered his preference for certain specifics, and is sitting back and letting Congress do its job. This display of respect for the Office of the President has few fans on the left, however. Since one of the many complaints about the Bush Administration was its Imperial nature, its scoffing at any limits on Presidential power, one would think that an Administration that makes a virtue of these limits would be celebrated.
Instead, we hear the constant complaint that the President isn't "doing enough" for health care reform. Um, last time I checked, we the people have a role in this. Contacting our elected representatives, getting information to them, insisting that a vote one way or another on their part would help or hurt their future electoral prospects - while there are some who voice this opinion, far too often what one hears is a whine that it's all the President's fault.
I guess this rant is about done. All I can say is the following, and mark this post for reference in a year's time: the Republicans are headed to electoral disaster next year, and there will be a leftward swing, not huge, but noticeable, among the Democratic caucus in both Houses of Congress. Health care reform, and soon financial re-regulation, will pass in some manner, fashion, or form, and form the cornerstone of the platform the Democrats will take to the American people next fall. The notion that the Republicans are poised for some kind of comeback is ridiculous on its face, considering the current state of the Party and its elected members.
We liberals need to learn how to celebrate victory a little, but also how to celebrate democracy, too.
