![]() ![]() For believing that they had the right to demand a return to the transformational political intervention into their own society that to this day defines the party. Obama caught the enemy once vanquished and tamed by his predecessor in a criminal act of incalculable scope and cruelty, hands bloody, pants down, and then he surrendered.īy the time the voting public realized this, the Democratic establishment and liberal pundits blamed everyone who bought this “hopey,changey stuff” for being duped into believing that the State had any power at all. The new President and his super-majority in Congress looked at the desperate bankers atop the gilded pyramid of American Society and decided that the thirty years of neglecting citizen’s economic concerns could continue with just a minor correction in spite of the crumbling social economy most Americans experienced they polished its crown with the bailouts, plugged the foundation’s cracks with the loose rubble secured through a Stimulus bill nobody remembers, and let Government’s 30-year withdrawal from our social economy go on with the President’s tepid touch and emboldening speeches. As Tea Party superstar Sarah Palin said it: “how’s that hopey, changey stuff working out for ya?” They had all but the openly right wing media in awe of a new President who promised change and a new nation built on hope, one that was supposed to be as prosperous as the America his Democratic predecessors created the last time a collapse happened. The Democrats had the biggest wind that capitalism could muster at their back. If you knew where Medicare comes from it was hard not to.Īfter Obama’s election, the Democrats had the Presidency, Congress, and the legal as well as historical precedent for a Post-Wall-Street-collapse reshaping of American society through massive economic intervention. Comedians, journalists, even supposedly serious Economists like Paul Krugman made fun of them. I was a 16-year-old kid who didn’t even care and I’m sure I made fun of them. Who doesn’t remember the “get your government hands off my Medicare” moment? Everyone made fun of them. But they knew two things: it was pissed off and it was stupid. We know now that it didn’t, but at the time Democrats and liberals didn’t see it coming. Instead of touting the success of Medicare as an example of how government managed health insurance can work, Democrats got hammered for cutting funding from the program, as Republicans purported to be the protectors of the closest thing to socialized medicine that exists in the U.S.It was back in 2009 that the Tea Party first appeared to spring alive from out of nowhere. But, on the ground level, most elderly Americans love Medicare and feel that it does good job at providing benefits. Sure, the system is flawed in a lot of ways – reimbursements to doctors are low and the program as it currently exists will eventually become insolvent. It’s kind of surprising that Democrats never tried to sell their health care plan using the popularity of Medicare. Her dismay with cutting $500 out of Medicare “all to help pay for government control of medicine” encapsulates a contradictory message I haven’t heard so overtly since a man attending a town hall last year told a South Carolina congressman to “keep your government hands off my Medicare.” Follow Ben Smith, here’s a new ad from a Tennessee Republican running for the House. ![]()
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