Watched an interview with Hillary Clinton recently and the question of Obama’s ability to hook up with the Republicans for the good of the country came up. Her answer was clear and very concise, and it made a lot of sense. The reality was that Obama wanted to connect with the GOP congressmen but they wanted nothing to do with him. This was the position of a tight knit group of radical right congressmen led by Mitch McConnell, author of the infamous statement that his chief goal for the rest of his tenure was to keep Obama from getting elected again., not to advance the aims of the country.
Well if that was the chief goal of the GOP, then as usual, they failed miserably. They also failed the American people in that they didn’t get anything done during their time in office and by failing to do that, they also kept the president from achieving many of the things he had planned to do, and therefore the country from moving ahead. It wasn’t until the second half of his second term that Obama finally accepted the depressing fact that he would never get any cooperation out of the Republican Party, and so began pushing ahead with his own agenda without consulting any of those who had there-to-fore stood in his way. Of course this has given them great occasion to whine, but they brought it on themselves.
This scenario should be a warning for Hillary and the Democratic Party and especially for their voters. The Republican’s history with the Clintons as well as with Obama is very clear. It was during Bill Clinton’s administration that the GOP emerged as the party of NO and even with Bill’s considerable diplomatic and political skills we didn’t accomplish anything like what he wanted to accomplish.
If Hillary wins, and right now she appears to be moving in that direction, she will need an awful lot of help at the polls. By that I mean, not just voting for her, but in giving her a full team of elected congressmen, governors and state legislators.
The Democrats have been very lazy in non-presidential elections and have allowed the Republicans to stock state governments and both houses of congress. Twenty-five states have fully Republican governments while that can only be said for seven Democratic states.
Electing Hillary means, childish GOP personalities aside, you like Hillary’s programs better than those of the GOP candidate’s. Of course, none of the GOP candidates have really come out with any functioning programs. They are too busy attacking each other, their families and their physical attributes or lack of thereof. But if you want the Democratic president elect to be able to function, you must give her or him the ammunition to do so, and that ammunition is seats in both houses of congress, governorships and large majorities in state legislatures.
There is only so much a president can do on his or her own. A president needs congress in order to create great legislation. That is why Obama’s work has been so limited. After the first half of his first term he didn’t have congress and our government is set up to prevent any one segment of it from doing too much on its own.
The first thing that Obama did upon reaching office was to save the auto industry and thereby give the country a huge boost back toward productivity. The next big thing was to pass the ACA. In order to do that he had to concede many points that hurt the whole program and as a result the ACA is still not as functional or as all-inclusive as Obama wanted it to be, or as the country needs it to be.
In order to get the program passed at all, Obama had to allow the insurance companies to write a big part of the law because they had such a powerful lobby. No Republican would have voted for it without those concessions. So we still are living with private insurers that make huge profits out of the system, when we should be operating on a single payer (the government) basis. We still have insurance companies that are non-competitive in their states allowing them to charge huge deductibles and squeeze subscribers. Look at Florida. It’s a disgrace.
What should be happening is that subscribers should be able to get bids from any company, regardless of where they live or where the company is located. What should really be happening is that there should be no insurance companies involved at all. Of course that would mean the government administering the health care system and that would be an attribute of “big government,” something that makes the Far Right throw up in their mouths.
These problems could have been fixed if the GOP had tried to fix them instead of failing over 50 times to abolish the program with no substitute in the wings. The solution to good government is electing good people. The responsibility for our government working lies with the voters not the politicians. If you elect fools, they will act like fools. It’s the individual voter’s job to set aside their own prejudice and look at the candidates for what they are, not what they promise.
The proof of what I am saying is; some people actually voted for Mo Brooks R-AL. This moron has already announced that he is going to bring an impeachment indictment against Hillary, the day she is elected. This guy definitely needs a hobby – or more accurately a padded cell. He should definitely not be in public office, but some idiots voted for him just as some idiots will vote for some of the most demented assholes on the planet just because they are promised the fulfillment of their most bigoted, misogynistic, self serving dreams. Will you be one of them?