Letter 2 America for December 31, 2013

Dear America,

The last week or so of 2013 was not such a good time to be a Republican.  First, it was revealed that over a million new families signed up for health insurance through the Obamacare website.   Then, in a New York Times article about the Benghazi attack of 9/11/11, an independent investigation yielded the conclusion that as the Obama administration said at the time, the attack was indeed inspired by the anti-Muslim film produced by a reactionary American clergyman, and in the bargain, as the administration said, it was a terrorist attack, but not an al Qaeda one.  The party leadership was left to determine which of two courses--admission that they were wrong on both issues and proposal of an alternative to Obamacare or continued stonewalling of the American public with ongoing demagoguery on both points--they seem to have chosen the latter.  The week ended with Daryl Issa, the arch-conservative, Republican operative who chairs the House Government Oversight Committee, appearing on Meet the Press to spout more self-serving hyperbole and partisan contrivance in furtherance of his relentless pursuit of The President and his subordinates in both areas.  He continued to insist that the facts were not all in on Benghazi, and he refused to admit that his criticism of the administration was more an example of caviling and semiotic parsing than it was a matter of any substance at all.  And as to the Affordable Care Act, even Lindsey Gramm, the redoubtable but civil--let's say civilly rational and almost bipartisan--Republican conservative seemed to take the low road when he was quoted as opining that the Republican Party had two choices: to offer an alternative to Obamacare or to continue harping on anecdotal instances in which the law didn't serve someone.  There were some Republicans who resurrected plans that had been flight tested in the past with no luck, but still, there was nothing new under the Republican sun.  It will be interesting to see how they fare in the 2014 mid-term elections if they continue to opt for politics over substance, and since one of their primary alternatives to Obamacare is for all Americans to pay income taxes on the value of the health insurance of those lucky enough to have it provided by their employers, the universality of Obamacare's appeal may become a universally acknowledged fact, and that certainly won't do the Republicans any good.

So, for those of us on the progressive end of the political spectrum, the year is ending with a bang, not the whimper we uttered at the end of 2012.  We have a president who has resolved not to negotiate with conservatives when the debt ceiling arises again in February, and we have a Democratic contingent in our congress that has finally mustered the political courage to fire one across the bow of the conservative Republican armada in the form of partial curtailment of the filibuster in The Senate...at least for executive appointments...portending the elimination of the filibuster if the Republicans continue their recalcitrance over the Democratic agenda for legislation during the next three years.  The moribund filibuster has been the problem all along for the Democrats in the form of their timorous reluctance to do anything about it for fear that the Republicans might regain control some time soon and use the power of the majority in the way in which the Democrats should have.  Democracy in congress is on the horizon, and if the Democrats regain control of The House while those in The Senate retain theirs, we might see a political anomaly in modern American history: a second presidential term in which real change is implemented by a president who may be a duck, but not a lame one.  In the words of the old rock song from the early eighties, "the future's so bright, I've gotta' wear shades," or so it seems at least.  These last few days of 2013 are, in my opinion, the most heartening we have seen since President Obama was elected.  The notion that for the first time in anyone's memory a second presidential term could exceed the first in terms of seminal initiatives and legislation for real change in America is innervating as opposed to the enervation that the diffidence of The President and his party has afflicted progressivism with for the almost the entire first five years of the Obama administration.  Let's hope that the Democratic tendency to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory doesn't vitiate the opportunity.

I'll speak to you next year.  In the meantime, Happy New Year.

Your friend,

Mike