This is exactly why American politics is so broken.

In today’s Washington Post there is a piece entitled His health-care agenda at risk, Obama stumps in Massachusetts which tells all of us everything we need to know about what is wrong with American politics.

For the record, I am a left wing Democrat who would like to see the Democratic candidate win in Massachusetts on Tuesday, but that is off the point. 

This election is essentially a matter for the people of Massachusetts to decide.  Why is outside money and outside influence from the White House and the National Democratic Party being used to strong arm something that is essentially the right of these people alone to determine?

The president and the entire mechanism of the national party machinery of the Democratic Party is in play and in great force in Massachusetts right now attempting to strong arm the voters of that state to vote Democratic on Tuesday so that Obama’s health care agenda will not lose that precious “60th vote” it needs to pass in the Senate.  Hogwash!

What happened to that most sacred American idea that “the people have spoken” is above all other considerations in an American election? Don’t the people of Massachusetts have the right to elect whomever they want without the rest of us Democrats throwing money around up there like a mob of drunken sailors on a three hour liberty pass in Tijuana?

This is flat out wrong, and I don’t care what agenda is at stake. 

This is Democrats attempting to buy an election with the same coercive forces and the same categorical money-driven campaigning that Karl Rove used all over the country to such great effect for the GOP.  No matter who does this, left or right, it is wrong.  And it is one of the primary reasons that the political process is such a joke in this country.

If great gobs of money thrown into a state election by outsiders can ultimately influence who wins, you don’t have an election.  What you have is a buy out.

Now, onto specifics. 

Obama’s Health Plan as it presently looks in committee is a joke.  It provides very little to poor people and the underemployed other than political camouflage to Obama that he actually did something for them.  He has not.

I am a totally disabled veteran who is also a disabled retiree from the federal government.  I generally use my OPM sponsored civilian health care plan when I need medical care.  This is easier than wrestling with the Veterans Hospital in D.C. or the Department of Veterans Affairs Beauracracy down in Roanoke, literally an entire state away from where I live, which is directly across from D.C. and not anywhere near the part of the state that Roanoke is located within.

I just had a procedure this past Friday and I need another one pretty quickly.  I am fairly well physically broken down I am afraid to say.  I have had more surgeries and medical interventions than your typcial NFL linbacker.  I have more surgery scars on my body than typically three people would have.  I am a physical mess.

My point here is that I have more doctors than you have socks.  I am on a conversational basis with all of them.  Many administer to the poor as part of their practice.  NONE of them like Obama’s plan. 

This plan does not do enough for those that cannot take care of themselves.  Once the public option was gutted, then all we really have is a sort of tit for tat “in your face” political slap at the GOP.  We really don’t have an insurance plan that does much for the disenfranchised and the under-employed other than give cover to the Democratic Party bigwigs who can now boast that they have “stood up for the little guy”. 

They have not.  This health plan is really all about politics and does little for health care in this country relative to those who cannot afford health care.  The plan needs to be scrapped and we need to start all over again.

And here is my tidbit, my input.  Here is my two cents on the issue of health care for those who don’t have the means to afford it.

Lets increase the size of the Public Health Service by 300% and send all Americans who cannot afford healthcare to the U.S.P.H.S. for care. 

I spent many years of my Coast Guard career in Alaska and the Alaska Native Medical Center and its supporting arms located in Anchorage, Alaska can serve as a blueprint for this publicly accessed healthcare for those who cannot afford it. If it works in Alaska, it can work in the Lower 48.

Lets also get all non-Staters out of Massachusetts politics next time around.  If we in the Democratic Party thought that this type of outside money was unseemly in GOP victories under Dubya’s regime, then we have to apply the same standard to ourselves.

“The people have spoken” applies to the people that are directly involved in any election.  It does not mean “the money has spoken” relative to outsiders swinging an election one way or another with outside money.

Shame on all of us….and as for you Mr. President, maybe if you had actually acted like a Democrat in your first year in office, you would not be seeing such problems getting “your” agenda through the legislature and becoming law.

We are tired of a “personality”, a “celebrity” in the Presidency.  Give us the Democrat we thought that we had voted into office Mr. President.  Half measures will avail you nothing.  We want what we voted for, i.e. change. Forget the political gimmicks and give us change.

And you can start at the beginning again with this health care bill and make it real and not phoney and then we can move onto slashing the monstrously huge Defense Budget in half.

There would be plenty of money then for America’s needs, wouldn’t there be?

Maybe a GOP win in Massachusetts is exactly what this President needs to bring him back to reality.  Just a thought.

CWO3 Tom Barnes, USCG (Ret.)