Okay. For the first time, in a long time, I’m rooting for Obama. Boehner pulled out of debt ceiling negotiations, citing Obama’s intractability (Yeah, right – he did everything but bake him a cake) and tried to force his own plan through, to force a Senate vote, and possibly a presidential veto. But Boehner failed to get the necessary votes, even from his own party. Boehner wanted to force a Senate vote on his plan, throwing the blame for default onto the Senate Democrats for voting it down, or Obama for vetoing it. But Boehner wasn’t able to pull this off, and it put Obama in a great position to negotiate a strong bill that preserves Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid as well as raises the debt ceiling.
This gives Obama the opportunity to play the role of the negotiator, the man in the middle, and finally WIN. It’s like an actor finally getting a shot at the Broadway role he always wanted. It’s a role that, in my opinion, he’s played too often throughout his presidency, but this time, it’s necessary, and might actually produce results.
Obama has pissed me off on so many things in the last two years, but this time, I’m rooting for him. I’ve got a grandmother who is on Medicare, and a mother with a terminal illness, and if something awful happened to my father, she’d be on Medicare as well. These are vital programs. Real living, breathing people need them to live and preserve a quality of life worth living. I cannot even begin to emphasize how personal of a fight this is to me.
We are gauged, as a society, by how we treat our oldest and our youngest. We can prioritize raw dogma or basic compassion. Do the right thing, America.
like an open book 