“Do they understand what this is doing to their own party?”

The question has been asked a hundred times by readers, family members, and friends—all of whom are dumbfounded that the DNC seems so willing to destroy itself over health care. Why, when every political cliché suggests that self-preservation is job one, are congressional Dems ready to sacrifice themselves on the ObamaCare altar? Clearly, the prevailing wisdom says they know exactly how bad things are going to get, so why do it?

The question was answered the other night, when a rambling, wild-eyed Nancy Pelosi appeared on the Rachel Maddow show. As I listened to the speaker, I was reminded of the early portion of “The Grapes of Wrath,” where a family of destitute pickers was being told of the wonders awaiting them in California.

“Think of an economy,” Pelosi said, “where people could be an artist or a photographer or a writer without worrying about keeping their day job in order to have health insurance—or that people could start a business and be entrepreneurial and take risk, but not job loss because of a child with asthma or someone in the family is bipolar.”

Maddow maintained her air of jovial superiority, happily calling the Speaker’s description, “The pro-health care reform stance, one of the best, put as well as I think I’ve heard anybody put it.”

I could point out that, if that’s the best anybody’s managed to “put it,” it’s little wonder Nancy can’t find the votes. Her health care pledge is the same empty promise that her party has been making, about literally everything, since they began selling us Obama in the early days of 2008.

He was going to change America. He would create a friendlier, happier, more prosperous country. Things were going to be different. We’d have peace throughout a world in which our stature had been restored. Hope was coming. Change was coming.

In Tom Joad terms, the oranges were supposed to fall right off the trees and into our baskets. Once we got to the California of an Obama election, there’d be work and respect for everyone, while the horrible dustbowl of the Bush administration would be left behind.

Obama’s rookie season showed the world that, while he’s a fantastic hype-machine, his throne was built on a mountain of promises he had no intention of keeping. Most of them, like his “sweeping tax cuts,” were made in direct opposition to his own intentions. Over the course of the year, it became increasingly clear that people were not getting what they’d expected from an Obama presidency. The more obvious the lies became, the deeper the sense of betrayal grew.

Obama’s decision to force health care on the American people is now widely recognized as the willful, hubristic stance of a narcissistic man whose ego controls his office. It’s overwhelmingly opposed, and the more Congress tries to push the plan, the worse Democrat poll numbers get. Now they’re faced with an election year nightmare, and an unavoidable November bloodbath.

To get back to the point, “Do they understand what this is doing to their own party?”



I used to think they did. I was of the opinion that they knew how bad it was going to be, but didn’t care. Their mission was to tear the country apart, and nothing, not even their own party, was beyond sacrifice.

Now, I know I was wrong.

Democrats have no idea how much damage they’re doing to themselves because they honestly believe that they’ll be able to rein-in the PR monster they’ve created.

Make no mistake, their goal is to shred the Constitution, tear down the country, and “rebuild it from its foundations” as a Mecca for socialist statists. They have no intention of allowing the American people to interfere with the plan. If they believed it was necessary, they might, temporarily, sacrifice some of their power to achieve the goal. They just don’t think they’ll have to. They honestly believe that once health care is passed, the “great unwashed” will fall back in line and gleefully suck up whatever slop they’re fed. When the dust settles, Pelosi, Reed, and Obama think they’ll have enough skill to spin this into a success story—to make you take your medicine, and like it.

They’ll buy the American people, as they have so many times before, with another round of glorious promises.

It’s a miscalculation of monumental proportions.

What they fail to comprehend is that there’s not enough spin in the world to turn this mess around. There’s no promise they can make that the people can trust and, as a result, even their ardent supporters are abandoning them. It’s a lesson they should have learned from their failures throughout the last year. They should have learned it again from the Scott Brown election. They haven’t.

Just like the migrant pickers, who made the trek to California only to be rewarded with shantytowns and beatings, the nation has come to see the Obama administration as a trap.

The “rabble” is fed up.

Robert Laurie writes a daily political commentary blog, The Robalution. Robert holds a degree in English from Wayne State University, and has worked in advertising as a graphic designer and copy writer.