I’m stunned.<\/p>\n
I can honestly say that I don’t hate\u00a0Scott Brown. I admire his ability to hold a belief and stick to it, unlike the other recent Massachusetts Republican, Mitt Romney, who says one thing while courting the vote, then changes his opinion once in office (gay rights, abortion, etc…). At least Brown has said from the offset that he’s essentially against both things. I tend to disagree with him on every social issue, but also seem to agree with him on some (SOME) fiscal issues. But at least he’s consistent.<\/p>\n
And Martha. Oh, Martha. I don’t fully blame you. Could you have run a better campaign? Absolutely. Perhaps if you pulled Vicki Kennedy into your commercials earlier than the week before the election it might have helped. Perhaps if your ads focused less on healthcare, especially as it was obvious to the rest of us that universal healthcare was scaring people. I’m not saying you should have backed down on your stance, but perhaps if you stressed it less.<\/p>\n
In a way, (and I’m probably going to get banished from Massaschusetts like Roger Williams for saying this), Ted Kennedy himself is partly to blame here. He knew he was gravely ill but refused to step down (whether it was his determination to pass universal healthcare or ego…I suspect the latter). If he’d have stepped down when it became apparent \u00a0he wasn’t going to be around to\u00a0do his job effectively, a replacement would have been voted in BEFORE the topic of universal healthcare became the issue that made Massachusetts a little more purple. As you saw over the past month, Scott Brown’s popularity skyrockets just in the past 4 weeks. If the election was last fall, I suspect the outcome would have been completely different.<\/p>\n
Now, it’s probably obvious that I voted for Coakley. But that also doesn’t mean I love her. I, too, have issues with the universal healthcare proposal. Although i’m 100% for universal healthcare, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, i think the way Obama’s crew is going about it is all wrong. The timing is wrong (so rushed). The methods are wrong (it seems they’re just adding and removing stuff nilly-willy just to get it passed in any form). The organizing is wrong (people are scared of this proposal…isntead of blaming Republicans for it not going through, educate the people as to how it is a good thing).<\/p>\n
They should be studying this issue for YEARS, learning how other countries do it effectively. You know, those other countries I mentioned yesterday that all have universal healthcare, all have lower health costs per citizen than the U.S., and who nearly all have longer life expectencies. If that chart\/statistic appeared in a commercial for Martha Coakley, or was presented in a presidential state of the union address, people might realize that it ain’t so bad.<\/p>\n
Instead, the American public runs on fear. Fear of the unknown. The elderly determined that they will get less medical attention or have their fates decided by death panels (seriously…how can that actually have been in the news?). The rich white guy determined that his money will go to support the health of\u00a0illegal immigrants. The midle-class family determined that they will never be able to get an appointment to see a doctor because “in Canada and England you have to wait months to get in.” (For the record, I’ve lived in the Boston area for 20 years and it’s always taken me 3-7 months to get in for a physical exam, and referals to specialists have always taken a few weeks to a few months. Obiovusly, something already isn’t right here…and this existed long before Massachusetts implemented its own half-hearted healthcare plan).<\/p>\n
Though, my main thing is this:\u00a0I still don’t understand how a constituency who voted in Obama, whose main issues were the economy and universal healthcare, could now be so against universal healthcare. If you’re against it so much, if it scares you so much, why did you vote for the candidate who made such a big deal of it? Do you like the idea of change more than the reality?<\/p>\n
Well, there’s always a positive side to this election: at least Scott Brown is more fun to look at than either Ted Kennedy or John Kerry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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