EDITORIAL: McCain vote ends travesty

July 29--After the Senate Thursday night narrowly rejected his ham-handed efforts to ram through an Obamacare repeal that the health care industry, the insurance industry, most governors and the American people did not want, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell finally got something right.

"It's time to move on," he said. So it is. The question is whether the needless, failed effort to strip health care coverage from more than 20 million Americans will inform any other aspect of McConnell's agenda.

All 48 Democratic senators rejected the nonsensical "skinny repeal," by which McConnell sought to keep repeal alive without an actual replacement bill.

Three Republicans stood up to that perversion of the democratic process. Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine recognized the dire impact that repeal would have on working and middle class Americans. Sen. John McCain objected to the undemocratic process that McConnell used.

Those three senators stood up not only for health care access for millions of Americans, but for the democratic process itself, which remains in critical condition in McConnell's hands. Ideally, their courage will a illuminate a better course for McConnell.

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