Dems Scurry from Tea-Baggers Over Health Care | Black Agenda Report

Dems Scurry from Tea-Baggers Over Health Care

Glen Ford, BAR executive editor

12 Aug 2009

🖨️ Print Article

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

Click the flash player below to listen to or the mic to download an mp3 copy of this BA Radio commentary.

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?

For Black Agenda Radio, I’m Glen Ford. On the web, go to www.BlackAgendareport.com.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendareport.com.

Do you need and appreciate Black Agenda Report articles? Please click on the DONATE icon, and help us out, if you can.

More Stories

Kit Klarenberg
Gilbert Bigio: Israel's Man in Haiti and the Architect Behind the US Migrant Crisis
09 Oct 2024
Billionaire oligarch Gilbert Bigio, is well know as one of the forces of influence that allow for shipments of arms to enter the country, provide cover for the western-backed gangs, and…
Max Ajl
Dismantling Green Colonialism: Stages of a Just Transition?
09 Oct 2024
Dismantling Green Colonialism: Energy and Climate Justice in the Arab Region has received much critical acclaim since its publication with Pluto Press in October 2023. Here, while acknowledging…
Recognized Movement
Open letter to President Abinader: We call for compliance with the Constitution and an end to denationalization and racial discrimination
09 Oct 2024
September marked eleven years since the Dominican Republic passed the law that revoked the citizenship of millions of Dominican people with Haitian heritage. The government still maintains that the…
Joel Mukisa
The problem is systemic: understanding the #OccupyParliament movement in Kenya
09 Oct 2024
Reflecting on the mass protests that recently shook Kenyan society from top to bottom, Joel Mukisa argues that we must go much further than a choiceless democracy to find answers. A systematic…
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
Black Agenda Radio October 4, 2024
04 Oct 2024
A Haitian politician's amusing moment at the United Nations obscures continued interference from the US and the UN. But first, we hear analysis of US and Israeli actions that have sparked the…