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Seldom, if ever, has a majority party been thrown into such disarray by such a motley crew. But that’s because the Democrats were already sundered by President Obama’s bullying of the Left over health care. “The generals of the Right realized the president no longer had an army. The zombies were set loose.”
Dems Scurry from Tea-Baggers Over Health Care
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
“Many progressives don’t really feel they have a dog in this fight.”
The so-called health care reform measure that single-payer advocate Rep. John Conyers calls “crap” got crapped on by a motley mob from the Sarah Palin Party. Like denizens of the original, 1968 movie Night of the Living Dead , Rush Limbaugh’s basic-unit American know-nothings and racists lurched into Democratic town hall meetings with mayhem on their rotting minds. The stage for the Revolt of the Zombies was set by Barack Obama himself, who from day-one of his presidency sowed mass confusion by never saying what he actually meant by health care reform, except that he was for it. Obama wanted to make a big splash with a bill – any kind of bill with the name Health Care Reform on it, as long as it didn’t entail a confrontation with corporate power. Like the Clinton health care scheme of 1994, nobody knew from day to day what was in the legislation, one version of which is 1000 pages long. It takes that many pages to concoct a bill that pretends to reform health care while leaving the corporations’ profits intact. President Obama came into office intent on beating down single payer advocates while announcing how much real money he could cut from Medicare to match the phony money put up by his friends in the health care companies. Progressives were told to shut up and stand down, and leave the negotiations to Obama and his fellow corporate Democrats on Capitol Hill. With the progressive wing of Obama’s own party thoroughly demoralized from the whipping he had been giving them, the generals of the Right realized the president no longer had an army. The zombies were set loose.
“The N-word peppered Scott’s zombie constituents’ complaints about health care.”
Many progressives don’t really feel they have a dog in this fight. Some, seeing the corporate Democrats scurry and run at first howls of the zombies, wonder what a real health care reform battle would have looked like, if the Left had demanded firm commitments from candidate Obama. But that opportunity was wasted. With the Left marginalized, who gets the undeserved media attention, but Georgia Congressman David Scott, the Black Blue Dog who considers himself a “go-between” – which usually means he goes with the money. Now Scott has had to rediscover that a large portion of the white Confederates he’s been kissing up to all these years think of him as just another…well, you know the word. It starts with “N.” The N-word peppered Scott’s zombie constituents’ complaints about health care. It appears that true Confederates can find ways to attach the N-word to almost any issue. Congressman Scott’s Georgia zombies may still be mad that blood banks no longer segregate blood by race. Which brings me to a last comment. In the heat of the August right-wing health care mini-riots, perhaps we can finally say goodbye to the idiotic euphoria of last November, when white folks collectively patted themselves on the back for ending the race problem with one well-placed vote. Too many Black folks seemed to agree that it was a new day for race, for issues of war and peace, and soon, for something resembling universal, affordable, quality health care.
What were they thinking?
Dr. Jemima Pierre is a Black Agenda Report editor and contributor.
Alec Karakatsanis is an attorney with a long history of work as a public defender.
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