Hillarysworld

March 23, 2010

A Glorious Mess

When the House began its final debate, there was already the sense that history was about to be made. On one of her many trips between the House floor and the speaker's office, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla. -- a cancer survivor -- said that fighting for health care reform was one of the reasons she ran for Congress. "It's going to be hard to forget this day," she said.

When I asked Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., to put the vote in perspective, he smiled and said: "Years from now, we're all going to look back and say that this was one of the days when we were worth a damn."

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Even with the "fixes" that now have to be approved by the Senate, the health care bill is something of a mess. But it's a glorious mess, because it enshrines the principle that all Americans have the right to health care -- an extraordinary achievement that will make this a better nation.

It may take years to get the details right. The newly minted reforms are going to need to be reformed or at least fine-tuned, and those will not be easy battles. But the social movements that allowed Obama to become president and Pelosi to become speaker proved that the arc of history bends toward fairness and inclusion.

Needed change must not be thwarted, even if some people find it hard to accept. Obama's epitaph was right: "We did not fear our future. We shaped it."

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Full article @ RCP

Note: Eugene Robinson is a Washington Post writer.

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Yes, I would agree with this article.  It is a glorious mess... and will take a lot of work.. but the pendulum has indeed swung in favor of greater fairness and inclusion, and they have indeed taken advantage of that to shape the future.