Live Like You Were Dying

So Martha Coakley lost the Senate seat Ted Kennedy held for 40 years to an unknown Neanderthal, and suddenly the world's gone topsy-turvy for Democrats. Prominent House and Senate members who'd voted for Healthcare reform at the end of last year are suddenly sounding the alarm and wondering if we need to seriously re-evaluate everything just because one special election went the way of the candidate that ran the vastly superior campaign and capitalized on voter unease with Washington's not-at-all-clear plans.

Well, maybe we do need to seriously re-evaluate, but probably not for the reasons that they think. So what if Scott Brown's election signals that every Democrat is vulnerable in 2010 or 2012? They probably are, but this is not a signal that Democrats need to go into every-man-for-himself survival mode and try to figure out if killing HCR will get them more votes than helping to pass it. Who does that serve, other than the ones lucky enough to hold onto their jobs for another term? Nobody.

Instead, I ask every single Democrat in Congress right now to do one simple thing: think about what you would want your political legacy to be if your current term were your last. If you knew you were retiring at the end of this term, what unfinished business would you want to make sure made it through before you were done? Discard considerations about your colleagues' electability, too: imagine that EVERYONE in Congress were retiring at the end of this term. What's on your legislative Bucket List?

Ted Kennedy wanted more than anything in the world to see Healthcare reform come to pass in his lifetime. His legacy may forever be damaged if the current legislation is allowed to wither on the vine or be tinkered with to death. But there were a LOT of things that the folks in Congress told voters in 2006 and 2008 they wanted to get done and would do once we took back a majority, and presumably at least some of it really did matter to them and wasn't just a focus-grouped soundbite. So what would be on that list? What would you do if you could enact anything you wanted free of political considerations?

• Make single payer health insurance available to every American who wants it?
• Ensure every child is insured until age 18 regardless of ability to pay?
• Pass a new Equal Rights Amendment and send it back to the states to be ratified?
• Renew and strengthen the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act, and add new benchmarks for sustainability and global warming prevention?
• Pass a new Civil Rights Act prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation?
• Repeal the Defense of Marriage Act?
• Make all healthcare expenses tax deductible?
• Make all tuition at public higher education institutions fully tax deductible and with federally-guaranteed loans for every student admitted?
  
• True immigration reform?
• The expansion of environmentally friendly mass transit outside the big cities through a new federal initiative?
  
• A new New Deal that puts the 10% of Americans in the workforce who are unemployed back to work on public works projects for the federal government?
• Expand Medicare and Medicaid to every uninsured American?

Think big, Democrats. Remember what you believed in when you first thought about running for office, and the sorts of things you wanted to accomplish. Think about what legislation you would forever want to be known as having your name attached to it. And then figure out your own personal agenda of what you're willing to fight for, even if it kills you in your next election. If the answer is "nothing is worth risking my seat for," then you deserve to lose anyway. We want leaders who care about making the lives of the citizens better and fixing our country's problems, not people who only care about extending their own job security. And as we've shown tonight, we are not afraid to tip the election to the other guy if you forget who sends you to Washington and who you should be working for. So make your list, and live like there's no tomorrow. Because there might not be.