It’s Friday night, so I’m not going to be very eloquent. But here’s a thing:

So the health care debate seems to circle around the notion of bipartisanship, and you end up with Senators who say things like, It’s really important to the American people that we come up with a bipartisan solution. And then you get people on Kos or wherever making fun of them, saying that the American people don’t give a fuck about bipartisanship, they voted for Democrats for a goddamn reason, and where did they get this idea?

But they both kind of miss the point, and it’s been bugging me. Because people do hate hyper-partisanship. That’s not something that went away even though Democrats control Congress with a supermajority in the Senate and we’ve elected a Democratic President. But we don’t hate it on principle. We don’t hate it because we want to see everyone get along and love each other and join forces and make sure their voices are heard. We hate it because it’s an excuse that we’re really tired of for not getting anything done.

It’s kind of distasteful to point to your opponent when you’re accomplishing things and say, “Look at these motherfuckers who can’t get it together,” but that’s not what bothers people. (Witness the Bush years post-911.) What bothers people is when politicians say, “We’ve got all this really awesome shit we want to do, but those guys won’t let us make it happen”. That’s the reason people say that they hate partisanship. Because when one party starts pointing fingers at the other, it usually means that they’re trying to justify the fact that they’re wasting time.

So the Kos types are wrong, kinda – we’re not a nation of happy Democrats who would just as soon pee on John Cornyn’s head as listen to what he has to say. Harry Reid and Max Baucus and those dudes aren’t being retarded when they say that the American people aren’t interested in partisanship. They’re just drawing the wrong lessons. We aren’t interested in excuses. But when we have to come up with a bipartisan solution becomes just as much of an excuse as the other guys are holding us back, then you’ll see how that shit can flip on a dime.