Resurrected

At the beginning of March, it looked as though Obama's healthcare reform - as well as his presidency - were on life-support with the situation going downhill. Scott Brown had broken the supermajority in the senate with his election to the senate seat of Ted Kennedy (a seat held by Democrats since the mid-1950's), momentum on healthcare reform in both the House and Senate had slowed to a crawl, and many of Obama's initial hopes for healthcare - a Public Option, a medicare buy-in, bipartisan support - had slipped away as Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) threatened to filibuster the bill. The conservative punditocracy had proclaimed that Obama's presidency was dead.

Last sunday, that all changed.

On Sunday, after a mind-numbing ten hours of debate, the House of Representatives passed the Healthcare and Education Reconciliation Act 220-211. The debate was inspiring, infuriating, and stupidly repetitive all at the same time. Democrats repeated the same old mantra of "healthcare for America's families and children", while the Republicans resorted to their Limbaugh-like scare tactics once again. One Representative claimed that the bill was "the first step in turning America into a socialist utopia", while another asserted that "a little bit of freedom dies today", while many proclaimed it "unconstitutional". Outside, hundreds of furious protesters chanted "kill the bill", hurling N-bombs at African-American members of congress and screaming gay slurs at Barney Frank (D-Ma.), the first openly-gay member of congress. Following its passage, multiple members of congress received FBI and Secret Service protection, while Twitter has been awash with death threats against Democrats and members of Obama's presidential staff.

At the same time, however, the most sweeping healthcare reform in decades has been passed by both the House and the Senate. Yes, it is flawed. Yes, it is a colossal paycheck to the insurance industry. Yes, it fall far short of the kind of reform needed to truly fix the United States healthcare system. But at the same time, it is a start. The first civil rights legislation in a generation happened in 1957. the Voting Rights Act didn't come until eight years later in 1965. Yes, the healthcare reform bill tackles many of the insurance issues - notably preconditions and payment limits - that should have been dealt with decades ago. The only real difficulty is that it is - ultimately - health insurance reform, not healthcare reform.

What we have witnessed, however, is one of the most extraordinary rebirths of a presidency in history. Since Sunday, Obama has gone from being the aloof and detached compromiser back to the tough-talking, no-nonsense semi-populist he was on the campaign trail. In the past week, the Senate has passed more sweeping reforms than in the previous year before that. Healthcare reform is passed, a $40 billion student loan reform passed earlier this evening, and Chris Dodd's banking overhaul is on the senate floor and preparing to be debated. The Democrats are energized, with multiple new-versions of health reform still being debated - and rapidly at that. Gone is the one-year long slugging match, the insanity of the townhall meetings and racist white people screaming "Obama=Hitler!" (they've moved onto "Obama=Stalin!"), the Democrats unwilling to grow the pair necessary to pass serious reform. Campaign donations have been flowing in, not only to Democrat congressmen/women seeking reelection, but to progressive candidates fighting "Blue Dog Democrats" in red states like Arkansas.

Simultaneously, the Republican Party seems to be in a state of absolute dismay and chaos. For months, Fox News and other right-wing outlets goaded libertarians and ultraconservatives into a frenzied bloodbath of hatred, assuring them that the healthcare bill didn't have a chance in hell of passing, and that the Obama presidency was as good as dead. On Monday morning, the shock of reality hit them full force. Many Republicans have called for states to sue the federal government (the Attorney General in Georgia is likely to be impeached because he has refused to do so), while others have blamed our favourite specters: ACORN, the liberal media, and accused Obama of being a Kenyan Witch Doctor etc. All the while, the Republicans have dug in their heels and continued to define themselves as what one Massacheusetts Democrat Rep termed the "party of nope". Republican politicians have continued to embrace the far-right tea party movement
Fortunately, not all conservatives have done so. David Frum, the former speechwriter for Dubya, immediately wrote that healthcare was a modern-day battle of Waterloo...for the Republicans. On Monday, he wrote on his website FrumForum:
"We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat.
There were leaders who knew better, who would have liked to deal. But they were trapped. Conservative talkers on Fox and talk radio had whipped the Republican voting base into such a frenzy that deal-making was rendered impossible. How do you negotiate with somebody who wants to murder your grandmother? Or – more exactly – with somebody whom your voters have been persuaded to believe wants to murder their grandmother?"

On Wednesday, he was interviewed by ABC about the role of Fox News in the framework of the GOP. His response illustrated an astute understanding of the Republican Party he once embraced but now criticizes for its embrace of lunacy.

"Republicans originally thought that Fox worked for us and now we're discovering we work for Fox. And this balance here has been completely reversed. The thing that sustains a strong Fox network is the thing that undermines a strong Republican party."

Unsurprisingly, Frum has since been fired from his post at the American Enterprise Institute. Similarly to the Republican Party, a mass uproar from the Fox News base that provides financial support for the AEI likely played a significant role.

By digging in their heels, the Republicans have virtually sealed their fate. By continuing to invoke obscure senate rules regarding committee work and blocking unemployment benefits, they have continued to render themselves irrelevant. Strom Thurmond's 24-hour filibuster of a civil rights bill in 1957 did nothing to help the Republican Party; it set in motion the machinery that gave Lydon Johnson a Supermajority in the Senate and virtually crushed the Republican Party in the congress.

Keith Olbermann offered the most stinging critique of the Republican Party's methodology:
"You will be the Flat-Earthers, the Isolationists, the Segregationists, the John Birchers. Stop. Certainly you must recognize the future is with the humane, the inclusive, the diverse-- it is with America. Not the America of 1910, but the America of 2010. Discard this dangerous, separatist, elitist, backward-looking rhetoric, and you will be welcomed back into the political discourse of this nation. Continue with it, and you will destroy yourselves and whatever righteous causes you actually believe in, and on the way you will damage this country in ways and manners untold."

Either way, what we have witnessed in the last week goes beyond a recovery. Obama's presidency has been resurrected.