Meet your Waterloo

Congratulations to the 220 brave Democrats who passed, with nary a Republican vote, the first significant improvement in American health insurance since Medicare. You stood your ground in the face of the best-funded and most carefully orchestrated disinformation campaign in history. Congratulations for staying serious about the business of governing and giving the genuine majority of Americans the kind of change we want.

My condolences to my many Republican friends. You followed Cathy McMorris Rodgers and John Boehner. You went all-in for obstruction, intimidation and massive disinformation. In the end, phony partisan polling, histrionics and intimidation failed.

I hope you learn from this defeat that organized lying and intimidation don’t always work. Ginning up anger and fear amongst people you deliberately mislead doesn’t always win the day. Adapt. Drive the extremists running your party back to the fringe where they belong. Bring your moderates out of exile. Put the grown-ups back in charge.

Like most Americans, I don’t want angry extremists leading my government. Fox Noise and talk-radio bumper stickers don’t mold a good philosophy of governance. Passage of health insurance reform might just be the Waterloo you predicted; but who do you think is headed for exile?

Jim Wavada

Spokane