That History Book on the Shelf

Okay, I know this is a little behind the times – practically eons ago in news-cycle reckoning. But this little turn of phrase has been sticking in my head like an earworm.

“Senators and Congressmen will come back in September afraid to vote against the American people,” [South Carolina Senator Jim] DeMint predicted, adding that “this health care issue Is D-Day for freedom in America.”

“If we’re able to stop Obama on this it will be his Waterloo. It will break him,” he said.

Okay, but what kind of Waterloo do you mean?

Healthcare PWN-age Video of the Day

This clip is actually a few weeks old, but it was emailed to me by a conservative who was in an apoplectic lather over Jane Hamsher’s attempted PWNing of Townhall’s Jillian Bandes.

As it turns out, Jillian PWNed herself.  Check it out.

Hamsher plays a little bit of dirty pool here, using her own cancer survivorship to try and taze Bandes into submission,but in doing so, misses a better opportunity.  Everybody’s got a story, and when you rest your argument on one, you legitimize whatever sob story the right wants to dig up.  Since all the right really has are anecdotes and speculative fiction, this is a bad strategy.

In fact, she’s responding to an ad in which another cancer survivor does the same thing.  We could trade horror stories all day long, and it wouldn’t do a thing to illuminate this issue for people.

Hamsher misses the big kill here, as Jillian Bandes delivers the perfect setup.  When Shuster asks her who represents the “50 million uninsured,” Bandes torturously haggles him down to 20 million people.

20 million people?  Using the best math available to the right, generously granting all of Bandes’ assumptions, that is the best they can do?  Why didn’t Hamsher zero in on that?  Who is representing the at least twenty million people who cannot get health insurance?

That is the real shame in this.

She misses another chance, as well, to challenge the contradictory assumptions of the right.  They say that the public plan will be a deadly morass, yet they are convinced that private insurance companies will be unable to compete with it.  What sense does that make?  That’s like saying that cheap cans of shit will drive beef stew out of the market.  It’s nonsense.  Bandes also gets away without answering to the overwhelming public support for a government option.

There may be some grassroots opposition to the public option, but it seems to be coming from insurance companies and their best customers.  Take it with a grain of salt, then get your blood pressure checked, if you can.