Worst Democrat of the Day: Dianne Feinstein

By Michael J.W. Stickings

For pulling an Evan Bayh and learning all the wrong lessons from the Massachusetts special election:

I think we do go slower on health care. People do not understand it. It is so big it is beyond their comprehension. And if you don't understand it when somebody tells you it does this or it does that and it's not true, you tend to believe it, even though it isn't true. It's hard to debunk all of the myths that are out there. In my view when people are earning, when their home is secure, when their children are going to school, and they are relatively satisfied with their life and there's a problem like health care – they want it solved. It doesn't threaten them. The size of this bill threatens them. And that's one of the problems that's got to be straightened out.

This is ridiculous. So let me ridicule it.

Health-care reform should be dropped because it's too complicated and because people are more worried about the economy?

Uh, no.

The specific elements of reform may be complicated, if hardly incomprehensible, but Democrats have done a lousy job explaining them to the American people. Maybe they should try instead of just giving up.

People are certainly worried about the economy, not least about the atrocious job situation, as well as about education, but how is health care, which tens of millions of American do not have in any adequate way, and which is sinking the economy and placing immense financial pressures on so many, not as pressing a problem as education? Yes, people want to go to school, and they want their children to go to school, but what does education mean if you're not healthy enough to take advantage of it?

To me, Feinstein just doesn't seem to grasp the primacy of health care, and health itself, when it comes to the happiness and well-being of the American people. Indeed, she treats it like an afterthought, as if it's just a sort of technical problem that can be put off until people are otherwise "satisfied." But how are people supposed to be satisfied if they don't have health insurance, if they don't have access to adequate care, if they're being denied treatment by their insurance companies, if the cost of health care is bankrupting them. Feinstein seems to be wildly out of touch with reality, and with the vast majority of the American people -- and her comments are appallingly condescending. She, after all, doesn't have to worry about anything, does she? She has a job, she has a lot of money, she has a nice home, surely, and she has access to the best health care all her money can buy.

It's disgusting, really, especially coming from a Democrat.

Besides, lest we forget, both the House and Senate have already passed reform legislation. Now it's a matter of getting a bill to Obama, preferably the Senate bill approved as is by the House.

Maybe, in the meantime, Feinstein can pull herself away from her privileged life and help explain what reform is all about and how Americans will ultimately benefit from it.

Health care isn't an afterthought, isn't peripheral to people's well-being and happiness. It's central, and utterly essential, like being employed and having food on the table and a roof over one's head. Feinstein doesn't get that, apparently, but maybe she could get out there and talk to real people about what's going on in their lives. And then maybe she would see that health-care reform should be addressed now, in conjunction with efforts to create jobs and fix the economy, not at some distant point in the future when people are "satisfied" enough to handle it.