Democrats throw in the towel; I respond with disgust

It appears that Democratic leaders are throwing in the towel on pushing for healthcare reform legislation anytime soon:

With no clear path forward on major health care legislation, Democratic leaders in Congress effectively slammed the brakes on President Obama’s top domestic priority on Tuesday, saying that they no longer felt pressure to move quickly on a health bill after eight months of setting deadlines and missing them.

The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, deflected questions about health care. “We’re not on health care now,” he said. “We’ve talked a lot about it in the past.” He added, “There is no rush,” and noted that Congress still had most of this year to work on the health bills passed in 2009 by the Senate and the House.

At the same time, two centrist Democratic senators who are up for re-election this year, Blanche L. Lincoln of Arkansas and Evan Bayh of Indiana, said that they would resist efforts to muscle through a health care bill using a parliamentary tactic called budget reconciliation, which seemed to be the simplest way to advance the measure....

Some Democrats said that they did not expect any action on health care legislation until late February at earliest, perhaps after Congress returns from a weeklong recess. But the Democrats stand to lose momentum, and every day closer to the November election that the issue remains unresolved may reduce the chances of passing a far-reaching bill.

And because of my disgust, I'm throwing my own towel onto the pile: I'm not lifting a finger to support any of those Democratic legislators who had no courage to move on their agenda even with large Democratic margins in both houses of Congress.

In 2008 I contributed heavily to President Obama's campaign as well as less liberally to Congressional Democrats. I walked precincts and walked on doors. I voted in every election. I worked in order to get them elected to do what they said they'd do.

And since they can't hold up their end of the bargain, I'm choosing to consider myself free to sit on the sidelines as well. Maybe I'm late to the party, but I'm sick of politicians more interested in being re-elected than getting anything done. As Ezra Klein commented today:

Politicians have a tendency of talking about the consequences of elections as if they're very real and the consequences of policy as if they're very abstract, and as we're seeing with the stalling of the health-care bill in the aftermath of Martha Coakley's loss, they legislate that way, too. And then they wonder why voters don't trust them and their initiatives.

During this past year I've been moderate in my expectations of Obama and the Democrats. But if they are this ineffective in achieving a key plank in their party platform, even with advantages of 256-178 in the House and a 59-41 in the Senate, then I'm at a loss as to why putting in the effort to elect Democrats matters.