I am so sick of many of the progressive activists in the Democratic Party, and I agree with most of their platforms. Public option, to them, has become (with some reluctance, because they actually want Single Payer) their Holy Grail. It "goes under the bus" or "dies" when the President fails to mention it at a town hall meeting, or when he expresses openness to another method. They go ballistic when he says "health insurance reform" instead of "health care reform", even though health insurance is in the most urgent need of reform if we're ever going to see actual progress in improving health care. They vehemently condemn the President and the Secretary of HHS when she says that Obama does not see the public option as essential to the bill. Anyone who says that public option is not everything and the only thing that matters, is a traitor in their eyes.
I know health care is a deeply personal issue which regularly stirs up strong emotions in anyone who has had a terrible experience dealing with callous, greedy insurance companies and the obscene costs of medical treatment, but does the debate really have to come to the point in which people from our side begin to behave disturbingly like those right-wing extremists in the Republican Party? We have all seen what could happen if people let their emotions overcome their reason.
To them, now, Obama is a sellout. He's pledged his allegiance to corporations and profits over the American people, and he should expect no support from the left flank of his own party in 2012 when he runs for re-election. He broke his promises, and he is not the "Change We Need", but "More of the Same". Why isn't he prosecuting Bush, Cheney, and all those who violated the Constitution to permit the torture of detainees? Why hasn't he already repealed "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and the "Defense of Marriage Act"? Why hasn't he already gotten us out of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Oh, and for that matter, why hasn't he single-handedly cured AIDS and cancer, eliminated poverty and infectious disease, ended nuclear proliferation, and stopped global warming? Aren't we expecting a little too much, too soon from one man to whom we've pinned so many of our greatest hopes? Hasn't he said that the real power to bring about change lies in the people, that they should hold his feet to the fire? Well, instead of moaning about the "death" of the public option, lashing out when it feels threatened, and writing about its woes, why don't they spend the time actually calling and emailing those politicians like they implore us to do, it seems, every single day?
