The last time Democrats had a supermajority, their biggest legislative achievement was a health care band-aid dreamed up by the ultra conservative heritage foundation designed to ensure big health insurance keeps profiting off sickness and death, and passed originally by Republican Governor Mitt Romney. And there are still uninsured Americans, and people being economically destroyed despite having supposed health coverage.
Republicans are the greater villains, and I vote for Democrats solely on that basis of least bad harm reduction, but lets not pretend either party is the people’s champion, or at all interested in addressing our disgusting, embarrassing, massive socioeconomic inequity.
We have the villain party®, the feckless wet noodle party(D), and within the feckless wet noodle party, all of about 2-5 people between both chambers of Congress who openly advocate for policy that would actually do good for most of the citizenry. And those 2-5 are despised by both parties proper far more than those parties hate one another.
The Dems had 59 senate seats, not 60. They never had an actual supermajority. The 60th seat was an independent that caucused with dems, Lieberman, and who single handly killed single payer because he had several large insurance companies HQ’ed in his state and wanted the payoff.
Obama did fuck up in trying to negotiate with the GOP for a year, only to have them all vote no. He also fucked up by not pushing it through before ted Kennedy’s vacant seat was filled by a Republican.
So what we got from that “not actually a super majority” was a shit system that still got 60 more million americans on some kind of health insurance, and that number is climbing. It removed pre-existing condition as the primary “dont have to pay” card for insurance companies, and it set maximum profits for them to boot.
Overall it’s still pretty fucking weak, but it is something that has helped basically every american, and has helped some of them greatly.
By the by, this is also why “obama should have made abortion legal” was a hard sell. The lack of an actual super majority and about 4-5 anti-choice dem senators. With no one thinking the supreme court would ever overrule roe v wade, it made sense to spend politcal capitol trying to get universal healthcare instead. Too bad they didnt really succeed.
Oh I 100% agree. If Republicans weren’t the only other option, I would never vote for any Democrat who wasn’t a staunch progressive. But we’re trapped in a two party system that’s trying to kill us.
Don’t get any hopes up.
The last time Democrats had a supermajority, their biggest legislative achievement was a health care band-aid dreamed up by the ultra conservative heritage foundation designed to ensure big health insurance keeps profiting off sickness and death, and passed originally by Republican Governor Mitt Romney. And there are still uninsured Americans, and people being economically destroyed despite having supposed health coverage.
Republicans are the greater villains, and I vote for Democrats solely on that basis of least bad harm reduction, but lets not pretend either party is the people’s champion, or at all interested in addressing our disgusting, embarrassing, massive socioeconomic inequity.
We have the villain party®, the feckless wet noodle party(D), and within the feckless wet noodle party, all of about 2-5 people between both chambers of Congress who openly advocate for policy that would actually do good for most of the citizenry. And those 2-5 are despised by both parties proper far more than those parties hate one another.
The Dems had 59 senate seats, not 60. They never had an actual supermajority. The 60th seat was an independent that caucused with dems, Lieberman, and who single handly killed single payer because he had several large insurance companies HQ’ed in his state and wanted the payoff.
Obama did fuck up in trying to negotiate with the GOP for a year, only to have them all vote no. He also fucked up by not pushing it through before ted Kennedy’s vacant seat was filled by a Republican.
So what we got from that “not actually a super majority” was a shit system that still got 60 more million americans on some kind of health insurance, and that number is climbing. It removed pre-existing condition as the primary “dont have to pay” card for insurance companies, and it set maximum profits for them to boot.
Overall it’s still pretty fucking weak, but it is something that has helped basically every american, and has helped some of them greatly.
By the by, this is also why “obama should have made abortion legal” was a hard sell. The lack of an actual super majority and about 4-5 anti-choice dem senators. With no one thinking the supreme court would ever overrule roe v wade, it made sense to spend politcal capitol trying to get universal healthcare instead. Too bad they didnt really succeed.
Oh I 100% agree. If Republicans weren’t the only other option, I would never vote for any Democrat who wasn’t a staunch progressive. But we’re trapped in a two party system that’s trying to kill us.