Progress has slowed in recent days on one of the signature issues of Obama’s platform, and a hugely important issue during the Democratic primary. The New York Times reports that the Blue Dogs, a group of Democrats described somewhat absurdly as fiscally conservative (in reality just opposed to spending money on social ills) are putting up a fight. 

It’s a discouraging development, given the history of political refusal to tackle a problem that most everyone agrees is huge and growing - the increasing cost and decreasing quality of healthcare. It seems that the country has finally gotten behind universal healthcare. The true stumbling block is the engrained refusal of politicians to betray the lucrative insurance industry. Republicans are certainly to blame, but so are many of these Blue Dogs.

The same men and women who vote religiously for tax cuts begin crying up the budget deficit when it comes to spending money to fix up this country and bring it up to par with the other developed nations, the most successful of which have already adopted what stick-with-the-status-quo’ers call socialized medicine. These countries have better care, and less expensive care. What they do not have is a cabal of wealthy and powerful insurance agencies worried that they will have to restructure and expand coverage. Insurers should, and if Obama is successful, they will.

The worrying thing is that Obama seems to be losing momentum in the debate. He has a huge majority in the House and Senate (a majority partially attributable to the country's rejection of Republican healthcare policies), but many of these people are cowards, and worry more about the next attack ad coming their way. 

Obama has been counted out before this, and some pollsters and pundits said he could never win the election, let alone get any of his bold initiatives passed. He won handily then, as I hope he will do now. What really keeps me hoping though, is the idiocy of so many of his opponents. I don’t mean idiocy in that they disagree with me; I mean the kind of idiocy of Senator Charles Grassley’s Twitter. I’ll leave you with two of his finest, on the healthcare debate: