These are clearly tough times for Dems. In addition to all the difficulties of governing, the inevitable and perhaps not-inevitable compromises, the last few days messiness on the health care front has brought the party to a sort of moral turning point. And with that, we’re getting a flood what you might call “Goodbye, Cruel World!” emails reaching out for ‘walk me back from the ledge’ services.
They start in different ways but all come down to: they’ve gone too far, asked too much, I’m out! I’m done! Some use more coarse language, more or less drama, different mixes of sadness or rage. I could stand this! I could stand that! But this is too much!
My point is not to mock, though I admit to moments of weakness that I mainly regret. I end up answering a bunch of these emails. And I greatly respect the intensity of people;’s beliefs and feelings about all of this. But I thought it might make sense to answer them all collectively. The ‘walk me back from the ledge’ service isn’t one we provide.
In the second round of an exchange TPM Reader RZ writes
OK, and I am saying that this is not just about this bill, but a long string of disappointments over many, many years, coupled with the increasing desperation of the current situation. What do you want people to do? (This is a sincere question.) I will continue to vote, but I feel it is an ever more useless exercise.
To which I replied: “As for nowhere left to go, I guess i just don’t know what that means. If you care about the country and the direction of its politics, you stay involved in pragmatic political action. If you don’t, you don’t.”
I’m not sure what else there is to say. People need to make up their own minds. I’m not sure where the idea got started that any of this stuff was easy. And is anybody really under the illusion that in the history of this country this is a unique moment of political adversity or reverses?
