Domino Effect

Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) recently changed stances, dropping his (overt, at least) opposition to the current Health Care bill in the House of Representatives.

So you might think, well good, fuck this blue dog or whatever congressman and women in "purple" states call themselves because House races are every 2 years and they're sissies. Except...

This is Dennis Kucinich, former Democratic candidate for President in 2004 and with a little less steam, in 2008. By far the most left wing candidate in 2004, and maybe tied for the top in '08. I remember volunteering for a Kucinich rally in a D.C. church in late '03, at a time when an anti-war, anti-deficit bloating, pro-civil rights candidate was considered to the left of mainstream, an idea not just perpetuated by the media, but probably created by it. Perhaps little has changed along that line.

Nevertheless, at the time Howard Dean was a frontrunner, and some saw a hijacking of populist principles as a method of shifting a block of Democrats over to Dean. Even seven years ago, 2003 was war time, and the easy analogy to reach towards is the 1968 Democratic contest, when Robert Kennedy took the anti-war, youth vote away from McCarthy (Nixon eventually won).
As it happened, Kucinich and Dean were both marginalized on the national front, and Kerry and Edwards became the tag team to carry the mantle of the donkey. A short time later, they were named the "two most liberal senators" (a title later switched to Clinton+Obama), and today, Kerry is not a punchline if only for his work in the Senate and Edward's obvious decline.

Returning to the original topic of this post, Rep. Kucinich voted against the Health Care bill last year, because it didn't go far enough, in lamens terms. Kucinich has long (before any elected national figure of recent memory) championed a national health care system, "medicare-for-all" as the news has recently dubbed it. His concept, as far as I know, is not just to give some people in the lower class, or lower middle class or whatever health care, but for everyone to have health care. The impoverished, the working class, middle class Americans, people who are not broke. Now that he has given way, I see no way this version of the bill will not pass.

I don't even think rich people would need to have the same health care as the rest of the population, and I'd have a hard time being convinced that the fury of the haves is driving the current wave of hatred towards the have-nots. I've heard arguments that claim, quite convincingly, that a wider health care plan would cost nearly the same amount of money as we are already losing with the current system.

Honestly, it is both bizarre and shameful to see these middle aged white people yelling, hurling insults and epitaphs at, what, town hall meetings? So many of these people, I guarantee you, already have health care. Do they really fear that they will just lose their health care under the proposed bill? It's simply ridiculous. I earnestly believe that in these people's eyes, knowing other Americans, especially non-white Americans, do not have the health care they do is a fulfilling and eerily satisfying feeling, enriched only more if these people believe they had a hand in the process. People might not have even appreciate health care that much in the past, I don't know, but a part of human nature is the sudden bitterness at realizing that people you deem below you now have the same things you do.