Several good news postmortems have occurred for liberals since Democrats' devastating loss several days ago of the Massachusetts Senate seat held by the late Ted Kennedy for 47 years.
First, judging by his biting, animated words today in Ohio, President Obama no longer appears comatose on the dire economic issues affecting the daily lives of middle and working class Americans.
Of course, Obama gives great speech, but in his first year, has too-often failed to follow-up on his supposedly impassioned ideas. He needs to back-up his words with strong actions this time on jobs creation, college affordability, reform of egregious Wall Street greed, and no-frills health care for uninsured Americans, sans the intrusive social engineering.
Obama's new fighting attitude today, though, was an encouraging start in a more constructive direction.
Second, President Obama finally... FINALLY... ignored the tepid, inaccurate economic advice of Wall Street insiders Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Economic Council Director Larry Summers. Instead, Obama finally... FINALLY... stood firm with the prudent instincts of Paul Volcker, former Federal Reserve Bank Chair, by announcing a bold plan to limit banks' size, and to restrict banks' trading activies.
I can only hope that Geithner and Summers and their banker pals are horrified. Next step: FINALLY getting Geithner to step down from the Obama administration.
Third, the uber-complex, 2,000-page Senate health care "reform" bill, which contained no reform whatsoever and greatly enriched insurance industry coffers, is dead. But health care reform is surely not dead, as President Obama firmly declared today.
More sensible legislative options are now under consideration that were not previously pondered by Congressional Democrats, including passage of a pared-back, more liberal bill via the reconciliation process (which only requires 51 Senate votes), and passage via a series of simpler bills which each address a separate aspect of health care reform.
Frankly, I believe that both of these two approaches are more thoughtful, preferable options to the Senate Democrats' frenzied pre-Massachusetts-election process of desperately compromising away the heart, soul, and substance of actual reform of health care.
Good News for Liberals
The good news for liberals is that the electric shock of losing the Massachusetts Senate race may jolt the Obama administration and Senate Democrats to FINALLY "get it," and to listen to and act on the pained voices of the American people.
But just in case Democratic leaders in D.C. still don't "get" the message sent by blue-state Massachusetts voters, I suggest they read the brilliantly poignant speech last week by labor leader Richard Trumka on Why Americans Are Angry.
Comments