Whew

FDR signs the Social Security Act. Frances Perkins, his Secretary of Labor (and social conscience) is the short woman toward the right). They would be pretty jazzed right now.

I wish this would have been done a long time ago. At least last summer. Ideally, it would have happened before I was born during the administration of FDR.

I wish this would have been a better package. If not something like Medicare for all, then at least something with a robust public option. And I really wish that more of the benefits would kick in sooner.

But still--or still yet, to use an Appalachian expression--last night's vote on health care reform was a historic moment.

Folks I know around here put a lot of work into this over the last year and it soaked up a lot of my time and psychic energy as well, especially on the occasions when the whole thing seemed to be going down the tubes. The bizarro town hall meetings this summer, an untold number of press conferences and media events, several op-eds and street events, a bus trip to DC, and endless meetings and phone calls about it--all these seem to be a blur.

None of these may have had any effect on the final outcome, but I feel better for having hit it with everything I had.

GETTING UGLY. I don't know what people have been drinking in their tea lately, but it hasn't brought out the better angels of their nature.

BUT FOR ONCE the fear game didn't work.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED