How mortally damaged is our democracy that the Democrats declare it a great victory when they win a procedural vote to allow debate on a healthcare reform bill? Not, mind you, an up-or-down vote on a bill. Not even a vote on a critical amendment. But a vote on whether or not to allow the Senate to simply talk about a bill. And the leadership had to kow tow to Lincoln, Landrieu, Nelson and Lieberman to get that!
The Senate has not been a great deliberative body for a long time (and even back in the day, their reputation was exaggerated) so maybe the Republicans were hoping to spare us a tedious round of endless speechifying? I doubt it. It seems to me that the Republicans (and their faux Dem allies) are afraid that some real information might leak out to the public if a debate were to take place - like that fact that no civilized country on the planet (including free-market bastion Switzerland) allows its citizens to suffer so at the hands of for-profit, private insurance companies.
But should the question of debate even be up for a vote? Why is the agenda of the Senate subject to a vote? It's the responsibility of the majority party to set the agenda and if they want to debate something, then the minority should just deal with it.
We've long lost sight in this nation that our society is made up of different interest groups. Some of those interests are complementary, some relationships are neutral, some are going to be actively antagonistic, and many overlap. At the moment, unfortunately, the only representation we have is that of the financial elites, who've managed to convince over the last 30 years that bloody, unregulated capitalism is a benison.
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