What A Difference Five Years Makes

Posted on 12/19/2009 at 8:01 pm by Bob Cesca

I wrote a Twitter thing about this earlier, but here’s Ezra Klein’s take:

Imagine telling a Democrat in the days after the 2004 election that the 2006 election would end Republican control of Congress, the 2008 election would return a Democrat to the White House, and by the 2010 election, Democrats would have passed a bill extending health-care coverage to 94 percent of Americans, securing trillions of dollars in subsidies for low-income Americans (the bill’s $900 billion cost is calculated over 10 years, but the subsidies continue indefinitely into the future), and imposing a raft of new regulations on private insurers. It is, without doubt or competition, the single largest social policy advance since the Great Society.

I will always get a little barfy over losing the public option, but I think progressives and the netroots have much to be proud of — and we still have a lot of work to do.

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  • LeeVanSpleef

    I hope Lieberman gets caught in a snowdrift on the way home.

  • camel54

    What a terrific perspective. I hope that after all this is over and a few years passes and Lieberman, Baucus, Conrad, Landrieu, Lincoln, Nelson are up for re-election, we don’t forget this time and we push for primary challengers. Whether they vote for it in the end or not, they have been shitbags (stating the obvious I know), and we need to make them pay one way or the other.

  • eve

    Thanks for this post, Bob. It does put it in perspective.I wish I HAD known this in 2004. I was so depressed and I feared we were in for a permanent republican majority.

  • Bull Schmitt

    I hope Lieberman makes it back to Washington for the cloture vote at 1am Monday morning.And I hope just as much that he votes for cloture.(And I hope that Caesar Rodney.. I mean Sen. Byrd.. will be open to supporting reconciliation down the road after seeing the depth of the Republicans’ bad faith.)

  • ceu

    I’m not seeing a “Joe for Joe Party” primary happening…

  • grs

    If I could talk to a Dem in 2004 right now, I would tell them to grow a pair and we wouldn’t be in nearly as bad a shape as we are now.Sorry, didn’t mean to crap in your cornflakes Bob. Yes, something big is happening. But it’s amazing the amount of damage the right had to do to this country before Dems could start to get back in power. And to now be able to rectify those issues at amazingly slow speeds is painful too.And since you added, “…and we still have a lot of work to do”, it just cheese me off that we wouldn’t have as much work to do if Dems would grow a spine. And gets me more mad that I’ve been saying “Dems need to grow a spine” for about 10 years now. Sigh, something is better than nothing. Baby steps, right?

  • http://www.osborneink.com Matt Osborne

    You know what? I don’t want to hear another word of complaint about the public option unless the complainer is willing to show up in DC and ask for it in person with me.No more whining. Democracy is hard!

  • Lexaburn

    They’ll all be washing their hair whatever day you choose to go ask, Matt.

  • Stijn

    Don’t forget to also tell that Democrat about the loopholes in those regulations, the mandates, the lack of any form of government intervention, the further entrenchment of the healthcare industry, and the lack of serious cost controls.

  • grs

    Matt, you’re missing one of the main points of Democracy. We elect officials to act in the interest of the constituency. Showing up in DC and asking for it personally should not have to be an option.

  • idabamaho

    Trillions in subsidies.Translation: Corporate gift bag.