American democracy: not dead yet

Aside from its consequences for people’s actual lives, what I feared most about a potential overturning of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (or Obamacare) was what it would say about our ability, as a nation, to tackle major challenges. I mean, if we couldn’t even get a moderate, market-based reform of our healthcare system–of the sort that was being touted by conservative think-tanks and major Republican politicians just a few years ago–what hope was there for ever addressing this problem? (Not to mention other big problems like climate change.) But the fact that it survived suggests that “the system,” however creaky, is still capable of delivering.