Health Care: Something needs to be done about Alan Grayson

Alan Grayson is a throwback to the days, before most of you were born, when Democrats had balls. (No, really, they did.) First, he speaks the truth about the irresponsibility, cowardice and moral bankruptcy of the opposition. Then, get this: he refuses to apologize. Democrats always apologize; it's how we distinguish them from Republicans. Not only does he not apologize; he repeats the calumny so hurtful to conservative feelings, that the only logical conclusion that can be drawn from their footdragging on health care insurance reform is that they would rather let people die than do anything to diminish the profits of the health care industry. And then, he walks on to the set of The Situation Room and kicks some serious bloviator butt:

Like Dennis Kucinich, Barney Frank, Anthony Weiner and very few others, Grayson isn't rattled or knocked off course by lies, irrelevancies, idiocies and "amorphous nonsense" from the yacking heads (Example: Alex Castellanos: I'm a Republican, congressman, and I have a question. Which particular Americans do you think I'd like to die? Can you name some? Grayson: Listen, do you want to make sure that people have affordable universal comprehensive health care in this country? Do you? Castellanos: Yes. Grayson: What have you done about it?). It was satisfying for once to hear "nattering nabobs of negativity" used in a context where it made sense.

Wolf Blitzer is nonplussed that Grayson has the temerity to refocus the debate on the real issue: that tens of thousands of Americans die every year because they don't have access to affordable health care. "And so you have no intention of apologizing?" he whimpers.

Grayson: Of course not. Apologize? I'm not the one who should be apologizing. They should be apologizing to America.

House-broken James Carville, on the show via remote, could barely get it up to take his fellow Democrat's back. "You make great television" was about the best he could muster.

So what happens next? Does the House leadership seize the opportunity to throw aside all the crap about bipartisanship, scrap the public option, and go for Medicare for All? Do they support Grayson by repeating over and over again what he's saying, that 44,000 Americans, 4,000 a month, are dying so that insurance companies can live? Or does the party leadership seduce him with siren visions of all he will achieve when he accepts the simple rule formulated to deal with Hubert Humphrey and used countless times since, up to and including John Kerry and Paul Wellstone: to get along you must go along? Or does Rahm Emanuel, as he has done so many times to liberal Democrats in recent elections, find an industry compliant challenger to slow down (or bring down) Grayson in the primary so that he returns to Congress next year much chastened, if he returns at all?

We'll know the answer soon enough, I'm afraid. In the meantime, a tip o' the hat to Alan Grayson, Fighting Democrat. And to "great television." Enjoy the show.

Action: Contribute to Alan Grayson for Congress.

Update (2009-10-02): We have a partial answer to at least one of the questions above: In a clip on this episode of The Joe Show (MSNBC), House Speaker Nancy Pelosi makes it clear that Democrats in the House, at least, are not going to throw Grayson under the bus.

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Whether the Democrats will seize the moment to go for real universal affordable health care -- Medicare for All -- remains to be seen.