Thursday, April 8, 2010

Reading the entrails

I watched the Sunday talk shows not this past Sunday but the week before. On one of them - maybe “Meet The Press” - the roundtable discussion basically came down to:

ObamaCare Supporter: The American people will love the Democrats’ health care reform.

ObamaCare Opponent: No they won’t.

Supporter: Yes they will.

Opponent: No they won’t.

Supporter: Yes they will.

Opponent: No they won’t.

Supporter: Yes they will. Medicare, Social Security.

Opponent: No they won’t. That Medicare Catastrophe thing that got repealed.

Supporter: Yes they will.

Opponent: No they won’t.

Supporter: Yes they will.

Opponent: No they won’t.


This is like arguing about whether it’s going to rain in Poughkeepsie on November 2. Eventually November 2 will get here and we’ll see if it rains in Poughkeepsie; there’s no point arguing about it now. And eventually November 2 will get here and we’ll see if the American people have come to love health care reform.

Or maybe we won’t. Maybe the American people will have come to love health care reform but the economy will still be in dire straits so they’ll vote a lot of Democrats out of office anyhow. Or maybe the American people will still hate health care reform but the economy will be booming and they’ll hang onto the Democrats because of that. Or maybe the American people will still hate health care reform but the Republicans will have done something so stupid the voters will figure that even the party that passed such a lousy health care bill is better than the Republicans. We don’t know right now but we will on November 2. Well okay, maybe not until November 3 if we've got a lot of slow counters out there.

All of which is by way of saying that I’m pretty much burned out on politics right now. This will become an occasional - very, very occasional - blog. If nothing else, however, I’ll try to remember to post on November 3 and let you know if it rained in Poughkeepsie on Tuesday.