A Lose-Lose Proposition

So, we're back from the brink. At least for another three months, then the whole cycle of madness starts again. I am, of course, talking about the debacle that was the Republican attempt to destroy the Affordable Care Act and threatening to wreck the economy if they didn't get their way. I don't know what I can say about it that hasn't already been said by someone somewhere, but I just have to vent because keeping all that impotent rage bottled up always messes up my digestive system, which can prove embarrassing to everyone around me.

I don't know that I should expect any better of them, but I can't help but be utterly repulsed by things like John Boehner, shortly after the vote, going on some stupid radio program to babble nonsense about how Republicans fought the good fight but didn't win, then going on to say, "We did everything we could to get them to the table to negotiate… They just kept saying no. No, no, no." 

Of course the Democrats said no! Is Boehner too stupid to understand why? Actually, he probably isn't. But he clearly thinks you are. And he may be right. I went to get my hair cut today, and one of the barbers was going on and on about how bad it's going to be for everyone when the ACA kicks in fully on Jan. 1, though he wasn't able to articulate any specifics. Ironically, this is a guy who had a quadruple bypass a couple years ago and might be facing a cap on benefits and an inability to get different insurance elsewhere, were it not for the provisions of ACA that now prohibit such insurance company practices. But that's just the way we think in this country, especially if we rely on sources like Rush Limbaugh and Fox News for "information". (As an example of the latter, see this article exposing Sean Hannity's extremely misleading "reporting" on the ACA on Fox News.)

Let's replay what happened here. In a nutshell: Obama put his Affordable Care Act before Congress. Congress approved it. Obama signed it into law. The Supreme Court confirmed it, with a few exceptions. A minority of House Republicans, egged on by the idiot Senator Ted Cruz, demanded that the ACA be defunded before the House would approve a continuing resolution on the budget and approve an increase in the debt ceiling. Boehner, fearing that it would cost him his job as Speaker if he did, refused to let the CR come to a vote, even though it was clear that enough Republicans would vote with the Democrats to pass it without any problem. The Democrats, following the principle that one should not negotiate with terrorists, refused to budge, and Boehner & Co. ultimately had to back down. So what do the Republicans have to show for this whole circus?

Well, they got a couple of very small face-saving concessions, like a requirement that the Department of Health and Human Services report to Congress on procedures to verify income of people who would get subsidies for health insurance. There was a guarantee to pay back pay to federal employees who were forced to work without pay while the government was partially shut down. Oh, and some pork. Who doesn't like pork? The Republicans can be glad they got anything, since at some point they themselves apparently didn't even know what they wanted any more, as illustrated by Representative Marlin Stutzman (R-Ind., with Tea Party backing), who famously told the Washington Examiner, “We’re not going to be disrespected… We have to get something out of this. And I don’t know what that even is.”

And what did the rest of us get? Well, we eventually got the government reopened. Also, according to Standard & Poors we got a reduction in GDP equivalent to around a $24 billion cost to the US economy—exactly the sort of thing we need right now. Remember when Boehner said this?

“Helping Americans get back to work is our number one priority, and we’re going to do everything we can to help create jobs and to boost our economy."

That was back in May, 2011. It's good to know that Boehner's job creation plan includes temporarily putting thousands of people out of work, threatening all the small businesses that depend on their patronage, creating the threat of a global financial crisis, and generally shoring up international investors' faith in US Treasury Bonds by demonstrating to the rest of the world that our government is capable of financial management on par with the governments of Greece or Cypress. It's a novel strategy. Good work, John.

Why didn't you just smack him with that thing while you had the chance?

We Now Return To Our Regularly Scheduled Program

Well! Glad that's over. The 2012 election is history. All's well that ends well.

I don't live in a state like Ohio or Virginia, so I wasn't bombarded with all of those Obama/Romney campaign ads. But I do live in Massachusetts, where the Senate election between Elizabeth Warren and Scott Brown was both intense and well funded. I don't watch a lot of TV, and I mostly listen to public radio, so I didn't have to endure too many TV or radio campaign ads. But I was surprised at how Scott and Elizabeth kept turning up in my YouTube videos or on web pages I was reading. Warren in particular did a good job of filling my mailbox with print advertising, and adorning my front door knob with those door-hanger thingies.

I couldn't be more pleased with the results. I of course (if you know anything about me) wanted to see Obama reelected. I was rooting for Warren as well. I didn't dislike Brown so much; he's a Republican, but a Massachusetts Republican, i.e., moderate rather than dogmatic, and voted with the Democrats a few times. But I wanted to see another Democrat in the Senate, and I especially wanted Warren to win in order to see the noses of all the Senate Republicans who so strongly opposed her as a possible head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau rubbed in their own you-know-what. I regret that Barney Frank, my current Representative and one of the more colorful members of the House, is retiring and didn't run this time. But at least his seat is going to Democrat Joseph Kennedy III, who handily beat his opponent Sean Bielat, whose campaign sort of boiled down to, "Vote for me! I'm a Republican!".

Looking across the country, I'm struck by the fact that the Tea Party wave may have crested now. The Democrats picked up a couple of seats in the Senate, thanks in part to the defeat of champion nincompoops like Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock. They also picked up a half dozen House seats. It strengthens my conviction that while American voters may occasionally flirt with populist wingnut ideologues, those movements tend to burn themselves out over the course of a couple of election cycles, because slogans will only take you so far and at some point you have to show you can also govern.

One thing I think this election highlighted is the detachment of leading elements of the Republican party from reality. First and foremost is Mitt Romney himself. The "47%" incident really called this into focus—amazing how Romney was able to portray himself as some kind of champion of the poor and the middle class after essentially writing off half the country as parasites in his not-meant-for-public-consumption remarks in front of an audience of his wealthy peers, as if nothing had happened. It culminated in his election night plans that apparently didn't include the preparation of a concession speech. It's an expression of the Napoleon Hill-type teaching that if you convince yourself that you will ultimately possess something, your conviction soon will magically transform itself into reality. Well, sometimes when you open your eyes, reality comes rushing back in. Karl Rove, sitting on the Fox News panel as an election commentator,  found this out as well, as he stubbornly insisted that Romney wasn't losing even as the numbers proving him wrong were relentlessly piling up and even Fox's own statisticians were saying "game over". 

"The question is, who can help the poor and
the middle class? I can! He can't!"

Then there's nutty old Donald Trump—you may object to me lumping him in with "leading GOP elements", but let's not forget that there was a time when he was considered a frontrunner for the 2012 presidential nomination—calling for a revolution over the election results. I can't imagine what a revolution led by Donald Trump could possibly look like, but I'm sure we would all ride into battle in the back of a really tasteful limousine while sporting elaborate hairstyles.

The revolution will be televised, and I'll be the star!

So where does this all leave us? Despite a few incremental changes in what for me is a positive direction, we're kind of back where we started. We have a Democratic President and Senate, and a Republican House. House Speaker John Boehner has made some faintly conciliatory remarks about cooperating to avert the looming fiscal cliff, but his statement that "we are willing to accept some additional revenues, via tax reform" sounds a little less than heartening to me.

Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, on the other hand, sounds anything but conciliatory. The statement in his remarks on the election result that "Now it's time for the president to propose solutions that actually have a chance of passing the Republican-controlled House of Representatives and a closely divided Senate…" sounds a lot like "my way or the highway" to me.  He did go on to say, "To the extent he wants to move to the political center, which is where the work gets done in a divided government, we'll be there to meet him half way." But then this is a guy whose stated top priority after the 2010 midterm election was to limit Obama's presidency to a single term, so it's hard for me to take that at face value.

You shall not pass!

Still… it could be worse. With one eye on the fiscal cliff, I will enjoy the moment. Maybe hoist a drink to a reelected President, a newly elected Senator and a newly elected Representative. And maybe another one, and then—why not?—one more, and really just one more, and then this one last one, and I promise it's the last one, and then really just this one more tiny one, and I think I am not going to feel well tomorrow morning.