One thing I've seen a lot of since the other night is people defiantly stating "The people have stood up and spoken!!" As if Brown's victory means the healthcare bill should be lit on fire and thrown away, never to be heard from again. Now, you can certainly say that the bill needs to be rethought, maybe some parts should be held up until people have seen that some healthcare reform hasn't turned us into France, and that the free markets they're so worried about are still just fine in case they wake up one day having reinvented Microsoft. And maybe Obama can move the argument to "insurance reform;" I still am not clear how he has not been able to explain to us "the insurance companies are laughing at you."
But all of this is misleading, since two Novembers ago 65 million people "stood up and spoke" in favor of a president who made it very clear he wanted healthcare reform. And most of those people still want healthcare reform. And so to make some claim that winning by 100,000 votes a quasi-cause celebre, emotional election (he can magically pull off looking natural riding in a pickup truck, she called Curt Schilling a Yankees fan) is the "well, that's that!" moment in healthcare reform is silly. I'd be wary of allowing entire states to become Blue Dogs.
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