Election Day is this Tuesday!

[Geno]

I'm pretty impressed that bill got passed (minus the abortion part, but somehow it doesn't surprise me that that snuck in), and from the eyes of at least this humble Canadian, this is a good step to seriously improving health care in the United States (and I'm pretty sure my family in America harbours the same views as I've heard some them speak openly on several occassions about how badly they've been screwed over by the current system). So really, bravo. This is good for the American people.

But for all the talk I hear about the Republican party being broken and in shambles, I'm not sure if that's really the case. One way in which Canadian and American politcs differ is the concept of party discipline - when voting on a bill in Canada, MPs are not permitted to vote opposite what the party has decided. Even if they're morally opposed to the issue, they still can't vote "no" if the party has decided that it will vote "yes." This obviously isn't the case in America where reps are free to vote as they feel (and 39 Democrats voted Nay). But still, out of 177 Republicans, all but 1 voted against the bill. Does every single Republican (minus one) think so alike that they all hold the exact same views on such a serious issue, or is the party much more coherent than we all think? I definitely think it's the latter. The way the Republicans voted so (almost) uniformly says a lot of positive things about how that party is run, and the fact that the bill barely passed despite such a strong Democrat majority speaks volumes about the state of that party.

Despite what has been said over the past year, I don't think the Republican party dead and gone forever. In fact, it wouldn't shock me terribly if they won back at least one house of Congress in 2010. From 2003 to 2007, the Republicans ran the White House and held a majority in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Today, the Executive and Legislative Branches are controlled by the Democrats. Just as the tables turned then, they can turn again.

It seems to me that when things go wrong, people blame whatever party is in power. Since things went so horribly wrong during Bush's second term (in my opinion, the worst things he did occured during his first term, but it wasn't quite enough to cost him the 2004 election), the people were quick to elect a Democratic Congress in 2006, and with the recession that followed in late 2007/early 2008, the people had had enough of the Republican party, and with McCain seeming to be just a repeat of Bush, the election pretty much belonged to the Democrats from the start, whether it was Obama or someone less popular (though Obama's charisma certainly helped). Now that unemployment is still on the rise (though Wall Street is making a steady recovery), Obama's approval rating is dropping and people are leaning more conservative.

Much of what happens has little to do with the president or the government, but nevertheless, they get the blame whenever things go awry. There will eventually come a point when Americans lose faith in both parties and will start voting split ticket again so as to prevent anything from being accomplished. :)

It's funny that people were saying the Democrats were up shit's creek without a paddle a few years ago and are now saying the same of the Republicans. Dynasties don't last forever though. Still, this is a rare, historic opportunity for the Democrats to get some major healthcare legislation passed, so I do hope that the Senate will pass their version of the bill as well and that the final, compromised bill will still contain a public option. I'm less confident about the Senate vote than I was about the House vote, and I wasn't very confident about the House vote at all. If healthcare reform doesn't pass before 2011, we may not have another opportunity again for a long, long time. And this was supposed to be our filibuster-proof Congress too. :(