Have hopes for Healthcare Reform been Daschled?

The loss of Tom Daschle will hurt. No doubt about it. Health Care Reform has taken a body blow. Let us not kid ourselves health care reform is dirty business because it is big business. All the pious lefties who drew their knives and struck them into the back of the President’s pick for HHS director better wise up. This fight is going to be mean and all the pious phonies better stop polishing their tiny ivory towers and get ready for a fight. Tom Daschle knew this. He knew the players. Most importantly, he knew the end game. Why?? Because he played the game and he played it well. Nobody becomes Majority Leader in the Senate from South Dakota…nobody, unless you know better than most how to play the game. South Dakota doesn’t have big donors like New York, California and Texas. It doesn’t have big oil or big coal or big machine politics. But Tom won.

I guess Tom should have moved back to South Dakota and opened a Bed and Breakfast like George McGovern. Instead, he stayed in the town he lived in for 30 years and worked in the career arena where he devoted his life. Maybe, we should require all unemployed politicians to retrain as carpenters or grocery clerks or bloggers (God forbid). But he stayed and did the work he knew and got paid. The shame!