My Thoughts Exactly

I've been meaning to write something impassioned and profound about how Americans should never ever in a thousand million trillion years ever vote Cons back into power again. I haven't gotten round to it, and it'll probably be best to wait until closer to election time anyway. But Nonny Mouse's "Buyer's Remorse" post is a good place to start reminding folks of consequences:

So over my morning toast and coffee, I read BoldProgressives’ article on Nancy Randolph, who with her husband were a modestly well-off married couple from Maine, and had paid for what they had thought was excellent health insurance… until Mr. Randolph was diagnosed with cancer and the insurance company denied him coverage. He died, and the couple ended up in bankruptcy. Heartbreaking, gut-roiling stuff. And my heart truly does go out to Nancy Randolph, hers is a terrible tragedy made so much worse by knowing it was preventable. But there was one small point that bothered me...

Nancy Randolph voted for Republican Olympia Snowe.

In the clip, Nancy explains she voted for Snowe because she thought the senator would be ‘independent’. What, she didn’t notice the great big R beside the candidate’s name on the ballot? She didn’t notice how ‘independent’ a certain senator from a nearby New England state has been?

Far, far too many people in this country have either voted Republican, or worse, didn’t vote at all, because they didn’t think all those issues progressive have been so annoyingly vocal about for years would ever affect them.

[snip]

We are all reaping the Republican whirlwind, and it will take all of us to get out of it. But that doesn’t mean we have to compromise in the name of ‘bi-partisanship’. Actually, this country is still wealthy enough to afford universal health care for all its citizens – what it can not afford, quite literally, is thinking we have to settle for Blue Dogs and the not-really-all-that-bad Republicans like Snowe, or so-called ‘compromises’ that are not compromises at all. We want… no, not want… we desperately need real progressive politics, so we must elect real progressives who support real progressive policies, and relentlessly hold them to their promises once they’re in office. We don’t have to settle for Blue Dogs or the not-really-all-that-bad Republicans like Snowe. We won’t settle for make-do, second best, get by, let-them-eat-cake, mealy-mouthed, half measure compromises.

We simply… can’t.

Precisely.