Who is angriest?

Reader comment on: Explaining the Anger Over ObamaCare

Submitted by Benjamin Geballe (United States), Mar 22, 2010 22:41

I would agree that many of the details of Obama's plan are not exactly the plan that he campaigned on, however the broad outlines are pretty much there. Anyone paying attention to the campaign could predict that whatever ended up passing would involve redistributing wealth from the richest to cover those without healthcare. That is essentially what this bill does in 2700 pages.

I don't think the anger is as widespread as some might think. It takes a hearty soul to trek to DC and heckle Representatives (I particularly enjoyed the clip of Glenn Beck angrily denouncing Nancy Pelosi and John Lewis(!) as pretending to by civil rights leaders). The Town Halls, the people shouting in DC this past week, even the 75,000 who turned out on September 12th are not insignificant, but they are surely a fringe. But as the 200,000 pro-immigration protesters showed, you can get a pretty big group together and make a splash if you have some organizing muscle helping out. Ultimately, I don't think many of the people who are so angry voted for Obama, so I can't imagine they feel betrayed. The real tale of the tape will be the independents who carried Obama to victory. They aren't the ones manning the barricades, but will surely be the ones who decide the degree of Democratic losses in November. To this end, it seems very counterproductive for the GOP to parrot the language of their most energized fringe and alienate the middle. What independent voter wants to be associated with a party compares an effort to cover american using private insurance to "armageddon," or advocates the violent overthrow of the government because they lost a procedural vote? I hope the Republicans continue to court the tea partiers, and I hope the Democrats do make good on their promise to bring up immigration reform. The tea partiers will get so nasty and hateful talking about immigration (see Tom Tancredo at the Tea Party convention) that the Latino vote will become as reliably Democratic as the African-American vote for the next generation. It will also serve to boost the Democratic base and young voters - nothing like a little old fashioned bigotry to get the liberals and younger open-minded people into the voting booths.

I also look forward to immigration, because it will allow me to agree with futureofcapitalism.

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