Oh Conrad where art thou?

With passage in the House last night of the Health Care “Reform” bill, I thought well, we’re f*****. Democrats have done it again – they’ve taken all of this healthy energy for reform that existed, and turned it against us. Industry has a new revenue stream, health care costs will continue to rise, the problem of the uninsured will continue to haunt us, and that creeping problem known as under-insurance will continue to grow. Medical bankruptcies will continue to climb, access to care will still be denied to millions of us.

Everywhere premiums, deductibles and co-pays are going up, coverages diminishing. The health insurers have us by the balls. What happened last night was a naked exercise of power. Insurers are sticking it to us, teabagging us in a battlefield victory dance. We will now be forced to buy their crappy and expensive products.

It’s humiliating.

But oddly, Democrats don’t seem to mind humiliation. I should say “liberals”, I suppose, rather than Democrats. But I don’t know. The terminology is confusing. Am I a “progressive”? A “Naderite”? A “radical”, “malcontent”? Terminology, like liberals, can be mushy. Maybe I am just a guy with two eyes and a brain. I only know this – the people in the room last night that passed this bill are not reformers, and are not our friends.

Saul Alinski said (in the 1940’s) that the difference between the liberal and the radical is that the liberal leaves the room when an argument turns into a fight. Oddly, he’s wrong. Liberals owned the room on health care, kicked the radicals out at the beginning. But it is true that they avoided the fight. They simply did not want us watching as they laid a wet and sloppy fellatio on the health insurance companies.

Baucus should have said what he meant when he had the single-payer doctors arrested: “No voyeurs!”

If any conservatives or right wingers are reading this – I want to give you a feeling of what it is like to be a Democrat, reformer, a radical – whatever you want to call us: The House Progressive Caucus issued a statement some months ago saying that they would not vote for any bill that did not contain a “strong” public option. Their numbers are up around eighty, and that is enough for force Pelosi’s hand.

They caved. The didn’t stick together. Pelosi, working with Rahm Emmanuel and Obama, worked behind the scenes to undermine them. Much pressure was brought to bear. They were told that funding for district projects would be cut off, that there would be no help from Obama in their reelection campaigns, and in the worst cases, that a well-financed primary opponent would emerge. They caved.

How do I know this? Oh, I don’t know. I just know things. Unlike liberals, I have an understanding of the nature of power.

Anyway, right wing friends, here is what it’s like to be a progressive, to rely on Democrats to achieve your ends. It’s like being drunk – too drunk to move, but conscious enough to be looking up through a haze at your friends as they stand in a circle around you pissing in your face. It’s a warm feeling, but not a good one.

There will be cheering and backslapping as this monstrosity makes its way through the Senate. Maybe we can kill it still. But I’m having a laugh – a good and hearty laugh as I realize that we would be so much better off right now if Conrad Burns were our senator instead of Jon Tester.

So, right wing enemies and detractors, if you read this, when you get a chance, raise a glass to me and to my comrades on the left, because we have on thing in common, if only one thing: Contempt for liberals.