This weekend I watched Senator Ted Kennedy's funeral service with sadness knowing that he did not live long enough to see his dream of universal health care passed.Then I began to get somewhat angry at all of the delays in the progress of healthcare reform. I voted for Barack Obama, now I want him and his administration to do their job.
I have seen all the nastiness, the gun-toting, the name calling and shouting at public town halls and I am sick and tired of it! Progressive Democrats like myself, the outspoken champions of health care reform, have literally not been doing their job. They need to be more vocal, to stand in Congress and yell "no public insurance option, no healthcare reform".
They have become, over the years, like the Republican party, deeply influenced by corporate money. Are they afraid that if they turn off the powerful interests of the health industry, the drug industry and Wall Street, they will influence Obama's re-election efforts in 2012?
President Obama, we elected you because you promised healthcare reform, to end the war in Iraq, not continue funding Afghanistan and tend to our own country's needs. You need to be less conservative and more progressive. I know you can, you need to fight more and finesse less. You need to stand up the Republicans, who lost the election by the way, and say "we need this because we are a decent country". The conservatives have dominated the debate over health care lately and the right wing has been winning the debate. We are a country of people who are hurting. The Republicans are the party that lost and the conservative movement that was deeply discredited over the last 8 years are setting the agenda for a Democratic Party that controls the White House, the Senate and the House. What's wrong with this picture???
