1. It’s a giant fuck you to the teabaggers, the Michelle Bachmanns and the rest of the stupid contingent in America.
2. Now that the stupid contingent has cried wolf (or, to be perfectly accurate, EVIL DEMON RABID PSYCHO ZOMBIE WOLF FROM HELLLLLLLL!!!!) about all the bad things the health care bill will do, when said bill does no such thing, it’ll make it a little more difficult for them to get political traction with that shit in the future.
3. On the other hand, when the bill doesn’t do all the things that Americans really want it to do (like give them a bloody public option), Americans are going to be pissed. And that may make it easier to get that stuff done down the road.
4. While getting Republicans to back the omnibus bill was impossible for obvious reasons, now that the bill has passed, it might be easier to peel off some Republican votes to support some incremental fixes in the future (see points 2 and 3).
5. In the meantime, maybe we can get something done about the most egregious Blue Dogs and egomaniacs. Get Joe effing Lieberman out of the picture and the whole thing gets a lot easier. And given the fact that most Americans do support the public option, and Joe wasn’t all that popular before all this went down, well… He could pull that “Connecticut, you love me!” thing once. Now they realize that they’re just not that into him.
I’m not all that happy about the bill. The lack of a public option is offensive, the Nelson amendment is worse than offensive, and there are still a lot of holes. But I do believe this is better than not getting the bill passed at all.