Rallying the troops. While there's still more than one troop left.

[captainsblog]

Apologies to the millions of you regular readers who this message is only indirectly directed to. Go. Watch the NCAAs (watch replays of Wofford's phantom turnover with 4 seconds left that gave the game to Wisconsin, but that's okay- two days from now, y'all will be saying "We don't need no stinkin' Badgers!"). Even better, go outside and play; it's a beautiful spring day.

No, this message is for a very special group of you: the 219 Democratic members of the House who passed HR 3962, lo those mere four months ago, with the support of exactly one Republicant who's already turned tail and run. Report and rumor have it that as many as a dozen of you, and perhaps as many as 40, are wavering in your support of the Senate bill that, for now, is the best we're gonna do. Some of you fear it goes too far; others, not far enough; while a few of you Stupakheads are derailing its merits with your pet cause concerns.

You've listened to the pundits. You've scanned the data in the polls. Many of you are convinced that, if you support your party and your President on this vote over this weekend, you will be ridiculed and excoriated and run out of Washington on an electrified rail come this November.

Bullshit.

If there's poison in the liquid of this watershed legislation, it's already passed your lips and you're already dead. Don't you think for one instant that the enemy machine will give you a moment of pass for changing your mind. You can bet your sweet bippy that Karl Rove already has your name on his whiteboard, next to the ugly, grainy black-and-white picture of you that he's gonna put in those attack ads this fall under the supered text

VOTED FOR OBAMACARE

What're ya gonna do, bunky? Try to explain yourself to that town-hall horde full of room-temperature-IQ teabaggers? "Um, no, I voted for the ORIGINAL bill, but not for that Senate thing which I opposed because [insert flimsy excuse here]." Or "There WAS no vote on the bill itself blah blah blah." Or any variation. Even if you get up on the House floor and stick pins in an Obama doll, crying "DIE DIE DIE!" to the cameras, your ass is still grass and the RNC is the lawnmower.

You've already lost. Unless we win.  Unless, by November, millions of people discover that OBAMACARE is not a dirty word- which is exactly what the enemy is afraid will happen.

----

Who's telling you you're going to lose if you support this? The schoolyard bully who got caught by the teacher two Novembers ago and got put on double secret probation, that's who. His punishment is up now, and he's back to picking on the goody-gumdrops little kids again. That bully, and his gang, are talking YOU into sticking your tongue on the frozen flagpole. They want YOU caught pouring the big box of laundry detergent into the fountain. They do not have YOUR best interests at heart. Quite the opposite.

Because you know what? Before your balls froze and fell off sometime between last November and now, a mandate-sized majority of the voters in this country supported YOU and what you support. Fairness. Populism. CHANGE, goddammit. Only months and months of endless propaganda from the right-wing media machine has turned that landmark victory and pushed it to the edge of the field of Waterloo.

The enemy still talks a good game,  but they're scared. When they refuse to admit to mere disagreement and call your positions "lies," when they attack the stories of the sick and even the deceased as being "props," when they belittle our side, first, for not publishing our bill and then complaining when we DO publish it? They're grasping at the straws sticking out from under their bad hairpieces where their brains ought to be. They can't dazzle us with their intellect, so they're trying to baffle us with their bullshit. Unfortunately, in this reality TV and Jesse James-obsessed world, many people buy it.

Don't you be one of them.  For once in your life- even if it's the only time- stand your ground and stick to what you've already supported. I'll even give Stupak and one or two other Democrats a pass, because I don't need all of you. Just enough of you.

Make it so, number 1, number 2,.... number 216.

Comments

[luckycee.livejournal.com]

You should send this post in to a newspaper. Really.

[bill_sheehan.livejournal.com]

Amen! Preach it!

I'm especially going to remember the pusillanimous dilatory tactic of opposing the current bill because it's not quite good enough - I'm looking at you, Stephen Lynch, D-MA9. South Boston needs fresh blood.