X is better than W[hat]

Without repeating myself, I'll call attention to the comment on my last blog from Retrieverman on the Massachusetts special senatorial election.  He's right--people are pissed at the banks; they're pissed that there are no jobs or that their job is gone next week or that people are walking away from mortgages and houses with impunity or that "too-good-to-be-true" offers from big banks to lower the interest rate on their mortgage are more of a hassle than they are worth; and they're pissed because their guts tell them that Obamacare is a fiasco wrapped in a monumental giveaway to insurance companies.  They are right.  They know that no matter how you justify it, insurance that costs them more than $5,000 a year for a family of 4 and then covers only 60 percent of costs, which the Senate bill deems affordable, is not advantageous to them.   It's amazing really, Rahm Emanuel has been so busy working to get anything passed in order to ensure the Obamacare is not Bubbacare that he has made something far worse. Now all the Obamans can do is whine that the cost of inaction on healthcare will be their ruination.  Then so be it.  

The Obamans decided at the start what they could not do--expand Medicare to cover everyone.  Indeed, they never wanted or intended to do that.  Nonetheless, many people bought the spiel called "hope," and sent the Obama to Washington.  What the Obamans didn't take into a account but the Republicans sensed intuitively--and doubtless through polling--is that it is far better to keep people hopeless and despairing, than to first raise and then dash their hopes and expectations.