Here's a thought: Seat the new senator from Massachusetts, finish crafting a decent health-care reform bill that merges House and Senate concerns, and let the Republicans filibuster all they want in the Senate. The vacuousness of their arguments against the bill will show them up as anti-middle-class blowhards.
And the American people, young and old, will welcome action, any action, from Congress, just to shut it up and be able to move on.
The 60-vote super majority in the Senate is just that. A health-care bill can be passed with fewer votes but still a majority, and the stupidity of a Republican stand against all the good parts of the bill might even convince some of them they want to be on the right side of history when the bill is signed into law.
My friend, Bob O'Neil, a successful retired business man out of Chicago, believes the election in Massachusetts was a message to all incumbents in Washington, including Obama, that something must get done or all their futures are in jeopardy.
I remember telling my friend Herman Malone after Obama's election that he had better "change" things or the whole country would explode. Young people in America, who strongly supported him, as well as middle-class whites, are mostly frustrated with the Washington bureaucracy's inabilty to fathom their 2008 election message. "Change" or be gone.
The same message will be sent this year come November if there is no evidence the people were not understood the first time.
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