On Healthcare: It's Good to be Polarizing

Yes he did! President Obama's efforts to introduce a health care reform bill finally paid off last night. A narrow 219-212 vote will now send a healthcare reform bill to the President's desk, after a year of contentious debate that many still think may be the undoing of the Democratic party. As for President Obama, it's certainly curtains for his bipartisan approach to leadership. With a resounding "no" from the GOP, the President and the Democrats must lead the charge for healthcare reform, and it would seem every other major national issue, alone. Is this leadership or tyranny?

If the Democrats have put their necks out on the line in favor of the lofty ideal of granting access to healthcare to more Americans (32 million more of them), so too have the Republicans with all of their fear mongering (death panels! socialism! niggers and faggots!) and their staunch commitment to being the party of "no." This time around the Republicans have lost and all they're left with is a tea party, bitter words, and the hope of divine retribution come November.

The Democrats, and our President, have certainly taken a beating over the last few months. Many, including yours truly, wondered if healthcare was worth undoing all of the progress the party had made over the last two years. Would healthcare, we wondered, send Obama down the path of Jimmy Carter, rendering him a visionary thinker but ineffective leader? It even seemed as if the media, the same people who some say were complicit in placing Obama in power, were reveling in his plummeting approval ratings and the increasingly loud din of the tea party movement.

But here we are, with a momentous victory that casts a ray of hope yet again on the future of the American spirit. Our country has started a new chapter in our narrative, one that is relentlessly optimistic and very much in line with the vision that our country was founded on. A huge gamble was made and we're all the better for the outcome.