OK, I'm pretty sure of this: expecting to lose is a terrible strategy for winning.
It's been two days since we lost our super-majority (a super majority that was a lot more on the limp and lame than super side) and already across the blogosphere I'm picking up this bitter acceptance of defeat.
And worse that: bitter acceptance of an expected defeat.
The irony of this, is that by bitterly accepting defeat we open the doors to let our elected officials act like big girls' blouses. We stop pushing, stop fighting and expect that everything will suck forever. And, the entire legislative branch says, "Well, hey, what can we do? You all know how it is..."
I'm going to try a different approach this time and pull on my big girl panties and remember that the legislative branch is, almost to a member, made up of the intractable, lazy, spoiled, entitled employees. I say "employees" since they do, you know, work for us.
As far as I can tell there are three options:
- Kill it and start over
- Congress passes the senate bill as is
- Senate passes the bill through reconciliation
I'm partial to number 2 myself. It's my understanding that the restrictions on insurance companies can't be legislated via reconciliation. And starting over just strikes me as more defeatist than not.
I plan on telling someone that.
I've blogged before about this, but it's easier to be a righty-republican than a lefty-democrat. As far as I can tell, talking points seem adequate to fall in lockstep behind your conservative representative. They just have to talk a good game. Whereas, we lefties expect performance. Sort of. It seems we actually expect our representatives to fail to perform. And so they do. Until we stop expecting it. Especially, Christ on a cracker, TWO DAYS into the "game changer."
In the words of the great American philosopher, Bluto Blutarsky, it's not over until we say it's over.
