Heroes

There is no such thing as a "hero" among US Senators.  These are all detached millionaire babies who spent last night toying with the idea of making your already bad health care system worse.  John McCain isn't a hero.  He's a preening attention junkie who could have voted no on the motion to open debate.  Two Republican Senators actually did that. They aren't being celebrated today they way John is. He also had the option of not even showing up. McCain could have stayed in the hospital where he had a perfectly good excuse to be absent. But, no, he had to come put on a "show" so that the press would write about this was all about him and not about the hundreds of thousands of mobilized voters and activists who have been fighting the repeal for months. Congratulations.

Obamacare is a conservative policy. It protects insurers and needlessly imposes often unbearable costs upon those it does cover. We need to move past it. We need a single payer system that provides care for everybody.  But our politics is so screwed up that we can't allow the debate to expand beyond whether or not the baby millionaires who rule us will act to give us something worse.  This time they didn't act and we are relieved. It's the best we are allowed to hope for.

Also, this isn't over. ACA repeal is not dead until the Republicans lose a house in the midterms and/or we legitimately begin the push toward single payer. Until then, there will be more opportunities to pretend the millionaire babies are heroes.