Odd deluge of anti-populist articles lately and not all against tea-baggers.

 

Time.

Slate.

The New Yorker.

 

The implication across the board seems to be that people are either misinformed or our children. They want the deficit reduced but they also want the government to focus on job creation. They hate the stimulus but they want unemployment benefits. They want budget cuts but only for other people's programs. They don't understand that payments to Wall Street firms, to the auto companies and to AIG were done for their own good.

These are all old arguments against the mob.

And some of these are funny arguments.

One says that the people are contradicting themselves because they want to cut spending but they also want a jobs program! Well, yeah. Maybe people think that the government could re-prioritize its spending in such a way that you could create jobs and ultimately close the budget deficit with the increased tax receipts. Maybe people don't think we should be spending more in Iraq and Afghanistan than we were even a few years ago. Is it really that people want the government to spend more and save more at the same time? I doubt it. It's more that they worry that the money spent so far hasn;t been spent fairly or effectively. Maybe the people have different budget priorities than their leaders or the press. It's at least possible.

Another argument against the people is that people hated the auto bailouts just as much as the bank bailouts. But the auto bailouts helped auto workers -- you know, the very middle class workers the people keep saying deserve the help. What a tin eared criticism! The objection wasn't that auto workers were helped it's that they were helped while other people suffered.  Why did the government help auto workers but not nurses, lumber jacks or magazine writers? Besides, thousands of autoworkers lost their jobs anyway.

Then there's the health care argument. These fools don't like a bill that gives them many things they want! Is it possibly because the bill also doesn't give them many things they want? Or even that it was badly explained?

Our civic debate is drifting in a dangerous direction. We're telling the hoi polloi to shut up. We want blue ribbon bipartisan commissions to make tough choices for us instead. The sentiment is deeply undemocratic and it is, as Jim Sleeper notices on the other side of the page, very Hamiltonian.

There's really no reason for populism to be a dirty word. It's flat out the case that the government's response to the financial crisis and to the recession was deeply unfair. Rather than tell the people to get over it our government should be trying to set things right.

 

 

One cool thing about having a majority is we can play around a bit and force our opponents to go on record. This 2010 budget the House Republicans are cooking up is there way of saying "we have ideas" without having to be responsible for them. Pelosi should just take their bill, hand it to a Democratic sponsor and have it rammed through for an up or down vote right away.

There's no worry that it will become law, since our majority can simply vote against it. But without debate, amendment or riders, let's see just see if the Republicans will vote for a bill that privatizes social security and abolishes Medicare in favor of vouchers.

I think it's safe that not even the blue dogs will vote for it but even if some do there's not a chance of the thing passing or of Obama signing it so, why not? Their budget, as written, introduced and voted on.

If the Republicans won't vote for it, they'll look like morons. If they do, we can bludgeon them with it for years. This could all be done in like a day and though I'm sure the Republicans will complain that we're engaging in theatrics we'd really just be showing how willing we are to give their ideas a fair hearing.

We could do this in the Senate too. I'd like to see every Democrat vote for cloture on it and then every Democrat vote against it so we can see what the Republicans and Lieberman do.

I was pleased to see the White House bluntly describe Senator Shelby's universal holds on Obama's nominations as the infantile tantrum and stunt that it is.  I'm pleased to see that the House plans to force Republicans to vote about whether or not to protect Social Security from privatization. I might take it one step further. Put the Republican economic plan up for vote, without amendment. Get them all on record. Criticize it AFTER we get their votes down for posterity. Hang them with it.

The knock on Democrats is that they can't play tough because their tent is too large. Indeed, it can be a problem when people like Nelson and Landrieu seem closer to the Republicans than the core of the party (and I haven't even mentioned Lieberman yet) but I think we forget how disparate beliefs are on the right and how vulnerable they are to being torn apart.

The moneyed country club Republicans don't actually have a lot in common with the religious Republicans. Heck, within the Bush family it took the long strange journey of George W. to bridge the gap. These days the Republicans have a moneyed country club class that's closely tied to Wall Street and an angry populist splinter throwing tea parties.

For a long time I've thought that some tea partiers could be turned to the good side of the force if we'd strike down some banks and implement some programs that tangibly help working people by increasing their standards of living and decreasing their financial stresses. I still believe that's possible. But it's not actually necessary. We can probably get the tea partiers to turn on some prominent Republicans even if they don't join us.  The Democratic party should actively be pushing those buttons at the highest level.

Then we should get down to the truth of the matter which is that, as Obama says, we lost our largest majority in generations and now have our second largest majority in generations.  It's time for Harry Reid to step up and simply ignore universal holds by any one senator. What's the opposition going to do, sue? Where will the Constitutional purists on the Supreme Court find a passage where our founders said that Shelby can hold up all business until he gets his bribes?  Reid is the leader of the Senate. If the opposition won't go along for a vote, he can order the sergeant at arms to remove them.

They used to hit each other on the senate floor. Maybe it's time to go back to basics. I know, I know, nobody wants to watch senior citizens fight on C-Span but maybe George Foreman could do color commentary.

Seriously, as Josh has pointed out numerous times, most people don't understand the senate's arcane rules. Heck, most of us probably don't. I sure don't. But I also think that when those rules are laid out in front of people they will tend to say "that's kind of stupid." So Reid, as the damned leader of the majority, should steamroll the rules. The American people will not rise up in defense of old boy club arcana that they don't care to know about and that they find ridiculous when they do.

These rules are mere Senate tradition. They aren't law and the people the Senate represents never consented to them. The Senate has also had many traditions over the years, that were not laws and were not in the constitution and are no longer abided. For example, in the old days (not the really old days but even 50 years ago) to filibuster you had to be willing to do it physically. That meant not only that you would have to be prepared to stand and speak and perform for hours and hours without break but that you would have arranged for people to be there to listen and to relieve you if you collapsed. We don't do that any more. There are no more cots on the Senate floor. Now we just talk about doing it.

Traditions change.

Shelby's hold is just a relic of tradition. A relatively new tradition at that. So ignore it. Things change.

It's amazing to me that after all the victories since 2006, which have been so substantial and marked by only a few defeats like a fluke senate loss in Mass. and some governorships, that we still don't seem to be in charge.

 But we have the White House and we have the majority and they are weak and childish. Let's bully them. We won't get everything we want out of it (especially us progressives because so many in our own party are so unhelpful) but we'll get more than we're getting now and we'll have some fun along the way.

Do they not have a middle-ground between Obama and Kuh-razy?

Today Robert Reich mused about the political potential of populist anger while over at Swampland Joe Klein wondered why people don't seem to understand that there really have been benefits from what the government has spent as part of its $787 billion stimulus plan.

Klein dismisses some of the American attitude towards the stimulus as ignorance for which he blames both people's lack of curiosity (remember that polite way of saying Bush was dumb) and the administration's failure to get the word out. His commenters pointed out that maybe the media didn't do such a good job either.

Reich describes people who trust neither big government or big business and wonders if they can be harnessed into something other than rhetorical bomb throwers. I've also noticed, and I'm not clever for noticing this, that some of the populists on this board are now derided as teabaggers and, of course, that the populists on this board have sometimes rudely questioned the progressive bona fides of liberals who might not share in their passions.

I suspect that Reich is correct that there is some common ground between populists on the left and right because people realize that at a fundamental and undemocratic level that life in this country is administered by both the government and big private companies. Both government and corporations are, after all, forms of social organization and both have close ties.

So the banks get into trouble and it turns out that we must socialize their losses. The big auto companies get into trouble and we must bail them out. We want to have universal health care but we must turn to the private insurance industry to provide. But this is just the obvious stuff. Every big business is subsidized by the federal or state and local governments in one way or another and those subsidies give them unique advantages against smaller competitors (you know, the small business people that our representatives in D.C. speak about so lovingly). Every time these groups get together, unbreakable bonds are formed.

A result of this is that corporate wealth has grown and the wealth of corporate managers has grown but that the wealth of working people (including the beloved small business owner) has been stagnant.

Populists on the left tend to attack the bailouts and more obvious forms of corporate welfare like the mandate that people purchase health insurance while populists on the right tend to attack the stimulus and what they see as the wasteful government programs it represents.

While we're having the old and boring big business vs. big government fight we're missing the hard fact that it's all the same. It's what big business and big government do when they're together that we should be worried about.

But let's take it one step further: why do people mistrust the government? It's because they think it's corrupt. And who corrupted the government? Yep, big business. Now they've corrupted one another and are so intertwined it's hard to tell where one begins and the other ends.

I know, this doesn't seem very useful but I think maybe it's a good time to revisit Joe Klein's question. Why don't people understand the stimulus? They do. They get that, as Klein says, some teachers and firefighters kept their jobs and that they maybe got some small tax cut (less than $100 a month) and that even now some roads are being fixed in the northeast (I saw signs in Mass!) but they still don't see it as doing much good for them personally. Why? Because they see the stimulus - a diffuse effort at spreading money into the economy that took no individual's problems on - in the context of the corporate bailouts where the problems of people running investment banks and insurance companies and car companies were specifically targeted and at greater expense.

People are largely and rightly afraid that the government wants to take what little they have and to give it to some one else.  That school teachers in Ohio paid taxes that went to make good on debts owed by AIG to Goldman Sachs is proof that people are right to fear such injustice. Unfortunately, people are not going to make much distinction between money taken from them for the good of Lloyd Blankfein and money taken from them for the good of their neighbor who got laid off by the car company we bailed out to save jobs.

In the face of all this skepticism it's imperative that the government deliver goods directly to the people. Why do we say "Americans borrowed too much" and then give money to their lenders? We could pay off part of every American's consumer, student loan, mortgage or car debt for less than we handed to the banks and the moral hazards would have been no worse. Or you could let every American skip on their employer health plan and shop at an exchange so they can get a better deal. Or you could across the board slash insurance premiums and mandate better coverage.

What you can't do is say you have a plan to cover the uninsured while the vast majority is insured and will still see rising premiums. Or have stimulus plans for favored industries while others suffer. To capitalize on the discontent plans must be simple and have broad, tangible, standard-of-living boosting benefit for individuals and families. Anything less makes people think they're getting scammed and... are they wrong?

In a response to MJ Rosenberg's latest, David Seaton suggests that somebody like Jim Webb could emerge as a crippling primary challenger to Obama in the 2012 elections. Of course it's way early to talk seriously about that but we're behind schedule on unserious speculation.

I'm curious about how people around here would react to a Democrat who challenges Obama in 2012. Could a populist liberal challenger force Obama to the left as one could argue John Edwards did in 2008? Is there any value in that? It's very hard for a challenger to get the nomination away from a sitting president. So if you knew Obama would get the nomination any way, would you vote for a challenger to send a message?

What if it seemed like the challenger could win the nomination. Would you vote for the challenger and risk not putting up the sitting president as the nominee?

Not sure how I feel about any of this. I think I'd welcome a truly populist, lefty candidate should one emerge. Of course I'd vehemently oppose a challenge from Obama's right (say if Evan Bayh made a move) or an independent challenge in the general from a Mike Bloomberg.

There's definitely room for a tough talking, anti-Wall Street Democrat without obvious conflicts to make waves, especially if 2010 goes badly for us and if the fruits of whatever economic recovery emerges are not fully distributed to all Americans.

Could sure make things interesting around here!

Nobody should blame "liberals" for the Coakley debacle.  Blame her criminally negligent campaign management, blame the White House for not getting more involved or blame the authors of the health care bill that's up for consideration for failing to come up with something that the base can rally around, but don't blame liberals.

On the right they will say that Mass. voters didn't want to export their Republican-created health care plan to the rest of the country. I'm not surprised. The Republicans created a plan that involved mandates but that left people's fates in the hands of private, mostly for-profit, insurers. Liberals, who will be blamed for this, have long warned that this would be a mistake. Atrios used to say something like "Democrats should realize that it's very important that people like the plan that's passed."  People will not like paying rising premiums to companies that make rising profits, pay rising bonuses to executives but pay falling benefits.

It was always vital (not just nice or desirable but necessary) that if you require people to buy insurance that the government should compete generously in that market to create a high floor for benefits offered. If you require people to buy something for their entire lives you must assure that they get a good deal from the start and that the deal improves as time goes on.

Some of you will blame liberals for this. But I know the liberals warned about this. It was never just about covering the uninsured. It was always supposed to be about a better deal, a fair deal, a new deal for every current victim of the private health insurance industry. But nobody wanted to listen to that.

And yet we still turned out and voted for the Democrats. And the Democrats left us vulnerable.

Don't blame us. We tried.

Bernard Avishai recently came out swinging and sparked the usual debate between one group of people here who call themselves the real liberals/progressives/Democrats or what have you and another totally different group of people around here who call themselves the real liberals/progressives/Democrats or what have you.

Words were exchanged. Fights broke out. People were called idiots.

But I'm left wondering just how much tolerance this party can have for those who would dare point fingers as if they're above the fray. I was reminded somewhat of another Avishai post -- the condescending tale of a lowly mechanic who used the Interwebs to fix Avishai's Beamer. I remember, but can't find the link to Avishai referencing his daughter's marriage into the Germany's megabucks Siemens family. I'm reminded of an Avishai who will point out that he's been more liberal than you'll ever be if you force his hand but who also seems to really buy into our economic caste system and, it seems, into the power structures of the Democratic party.

Avishai is a smart man but he thinks he knows what's good for you. He thinks he knows better than you. I don't care if he's more liberal than I am, he's definitely from the anti-populist wing of the party and when he sees a weak candidate like Coakley struggling in an election (and that's what's going on here, we ran a weak candidate) he decides to blame the folks who won't get with the program.

Now, now, I am not for letting Coakley flounder or killing the bill or any of that. But I do believe, as I always have, in more and better Democrats and I believe that Coakley's problems are Coakley's problems and not Howard Dean's.

Avishai warns that if people on the left don't love the bill openly, loudly and proudly then we won't inspire undecideds or Republicans to love the bill either. I think he'll find that this stuff can't be faked though. Enthusiasm is either there or it isn't. Something gets people to the polls for a special election or it doesn't. If you want to win you have to genuine excite people you can't tell them what they're supposed to be excited about. You have to appeal to intellect not to a sense of obligation.

When you really look at what Avishai is saying it comes down to: "I don't care what you want, I don't care what you think, you're obliged to not only support this but to not let anyone catch you holding your nose as you do."

Some people here like Fred Moolten and Stillidealistic and many others have made strong cases for the bill that I respectfully disagree with but that I understand and take into account when I think about these matters. But I will never find a person like Avishai persuasive for as long as he's more interested in telling me what to do than he is in finding out what I think and why. It's the presumption of our party's leaders that, in the end, has to be blamed for any stumbles that the party encounters.

There's nobody here I don't like. I've got some good progressive friends here who I disagree with a lot and some good ones who I agree with a lot. But there is, as Libertine pointed out earlier this weekend a tendency for some on the left to dismiss all of Obama's leftward critics as people who will never ever be satisfied with anything that any Democrat does once they achieve higher office.


Those of us who tend to lob some bombs at the establishment Democrats of the world see an unfamiliar caricature of ourselves here. Do we seem to always have issue with everything? Yeah. But it's also as if we're being told no at every single turn -- and not because America is a center-right country or to protect blue dog Democrats or for any of the sundry political reasons but because we suspect, deep down that our leaders do not fundamentally agree with us on a number of issues.

The problem for me is that individual Democrats in the federal government are unlikely to believe in a mix of economic populism (bailing out borrowers before lenders) reduced military and security spending, more immigration, social libertarianism... The people we elect don't believe in any of this stuff. The legislation that results really does reflect what the people in our government believe. Make no mistakes, Barack Obama honestly believes that you can have universal health care coverage delivered by mostly for-profit insurance companies and that it will be at least adequate for every American. We'll see.

So back to our little debate among liberals here -- I don't need to get my way on every issue. If I get something I like I'll say it. But now let's look at the other side. Liberals flatter themselves as "the base" and the other side flatters itself as the compromisers or even the adults in the room. While the adults, talking to us as if we're children say "you complain about absolutely everything" I guess I have to say "you'll defend absolutely anything."

And if you look over all of our many arguments here I think you'll see there are some people who will defend every thing that the establishment Democrats (not just Obama, but including him) do. We've had people here defending NSA wiretapping of American phone calls, the escalation of the war in Afghanistan, the bank bailouts and even the "support it without doing much for it" take on same sex marriage. The adults even told the feminists among us that the Ben Nelson abortion amendment to health care was no big deal.

Here's a telling example. Theda Skocpol once posted at TPMCafe that if Obama can't provide a strong public option that he shouldn't count on support from progressives. But Obama didn't think the public option was so important and the bill we got reflects that. So some progressives around here said "Kill the bill!" Skocpol returns and tells us to support it. In the comments Dijamo links to Skocpol's original statement and Skocpol doesn't even have the courtesy to explain her about-face.

So yes, it seems like some people on our side will defend anything. Absolutely anything.

But do you all really believe that Obama and the current crop of Democrats in the House and Senate are doing their absolute best with what's available? That we are, in effect, getting the best of what's possible?

Are you really going to defend everything they do? You want to know when we'll quit whining? Fair enough. But tell me where you all will draw the line.

The editorial board of the Wall Street Journal interprets the events wrong but is right to point out that Martha Coakley was the beneficiary of a a fundraiser held by pharmaceutical and health care lobbyists and executives.

The Journal wants to know why useful idiots from Pfizer, United Health, Merck and others as a last chance to stop Obamacare in its tracks.

Oh silly Journal.  The industry loves Obamacare. They know that the mandate without a real public option is a bigger government subsidy program, in the long run, than TARP. Did the industry get everything it wanted out of this? Of course not. But they got a lot.

Ask a health industry executive if they think their company will be more profitable 10 years from now and they're sure to say yes. Ask a middle class worker if they expect their premiums will rise and benefits will be less generous 10 years from now, I think you'll get the same answer. The industry supports this bill because it's a victory for them, plain and simple

Let's stop saying that people have "links to al-qaeda" just because they say they do.

When I was a little kid in the 80s all the boys that wanted to sound tough claimed to be members of the Crips and the Bloods.  The world is full of wannabes.

Not saying there aren't real al-qaeda members out there and not knowing much about the Detroit plane "attack" I'm not even saying that this guy isn't what he says he is. But at this point... it's too soon to say there's a link.

It's odd how quick the media is to play up al-qaeda connections after a decade of government busts on lame-oids playing GI Joe in their backyards and calling themselves sleeper cells or some such nonsense.

Let's not have another national security crisis over this unless we really need to. My gut says nutcase with an inflated sense of his own abilities did something stupid, got his butt kicked by his fellow passengers and faces a world of hurt for it for years to come. It doesn't mean that planes are going to start falling from the sky.

I admit, I've been a little ticked off as we headed into the health reform holiday season.  The debate has certainly exposed some schisms within the Democratic and progressive communities, though I guess none of it should be considered a surprise. We have been having the same fights for a long time. Libertarian leftism vs. communitarian leftism. Incrementalists vs. Big Leapers. Populists vs.Pragmatists.  Call it all whatever you want.

This Christmas I hope you'll reflect on the one label we all have in common, the one we use to describe our fellow-traveling debate partners, the one we resort to when we're really frustrated...

We call each other...

Republicans.

Common ground enough for me! So long as that's the big insult we reserve for one another then I know we all have our eyes on the real enemy.

To end 2009, if I called any of you the R word or the C word (conservative!) I apologize. In 2010 I'll try to do a better job dealing with your arguments and will try not to resort to questioning your motives. You pathetic shills for the insurance industry. (Hey, it's not 2010 yet!)

Merry Christmas. And I'm holding each and every one of you health care reform supporters to your promise that we're going to build on this and that this is a first statement, not a final answer. :)

The problem with health insurance reform as it's about to pass is that it makes it illegal for people not to have insurance coverage but also does nothing to change the way idn which most people get insurance, which is through a plan their employer chooses.

Under current law, if you don't like your employer's you can reject it. It's up to you to decide if the plan is to your liking and if the premiums charged are worth the services that are being offered. Under the new law you won't have that choice.

Employers are not typically transparent about why they choose the plan they've chosen but there are many capricious reasons why am employer might not choose the best plan for employees. Obviously, employers want to save money and to shift as many costs as possible onto the people who work for them while not driving talented folks away. My employer actually chose the plan for political reasons as the owner of my company has long been a major proponent of health savings accounts, high deductible care and "catastrophic" coverage. Employers can even get bribes and kickbacks from consultants and insurance companies.

One simple solution for this is to define the uninsured as anyone without coverage, including people who opt out of an employer plan that they think is inadequate. These people would then have the right to go and purchase insurance through whatever exchange that the uninsured will use to purchase insurance with, of course, the same subsidies.

This wouldn't be as good as a public option open to any American who wants it but it would change the competitive dynamic of the insurance industry -- it would no longer be enough for an insurance company to convince a corporate purchasing manager or HR executive if the company wants to keep enrollees it will have to convince individual workers to stay.

The current legislation effectively says that if your employers offers what the government considers to be minimum coverage that you must accept it, and pay for it, like it or not. How is that okay?  I'm not demanding anything radical like a public option,I just want the exchanges open so that some HR execs decision doesn't effectively have the force of law behind it. Unless you an insurance industry lobbyist it's hard to see how you could argue with that.

It's difficult not to read "Abandoned" by reader AK. We shouldn't have 52 year old citizens who can't afford to access medical care. We all agree on that.  Solving that issue is a necessary part of health care reform.

 

But to me it was never sufficient. Health reform is supposed to have wide benefits for everyone whether you're insured or not.

 

The majority of working Americans are, after all, insured and they're insured through plans chosen by their employers and offered up as part of compensation. Some of those people are under-insured but don't know it. Most are over-paying for what they get and they face premiums and deductibles that rise annually. Health reform was meant to solve these issues.

 

The campaign promise went: "If you like the plan you have, you can keep it." What we're getting is, "If you have a plan, you have to keep it, whether you like it or not."  This is a big change. Under current law I can refuse my employer's coverage if I don't like it. It's actually good that people have that option except that most can't make use of it because buying insurance as an individual is nearly impossible.

 

A robust public option, open to anyone who wants it, changes that. When people say this is tangential to the debate I get really frustrated. Right now the average American has a choice: Your employer plan or nothing. Under reform your choice is your employer plan or you pay a fine. What? That's lunacy. A public option open to everybody gives everyone a choice. It's the only way to make Obama's promise "If you like the plan you have, you can keep it," have any meaning because it adds the obvious: "If you don't like the plan you have, you have options."

 

Worse, our Senators are talking about taxing health care plans that provide generous benefits. Generous benefits are good. Many of them were won in union negotiations where wages were given up in exchange for a better benefits package. We're taxing that? We should be looking to these "Cadillac" plans as a minimum standard, not as a maximum.

 

Finally...if this bill passes my insurance premiums and deductibles are going to continue to rise year after year. I don't see anything put in place to stop that from happening. So if I think and I do that I pay too much for what I get in return this bill does very little for me.

 

Just remember, I'm in the majority here. I have insurance. If you want to help me out, do something to keep my premiums and deductibles low and to get me more generous services. A public option open to every taxpayer is a great way to do that.

 

If not you're going to have a lot of people realizing in the years after health care reform that they didn't get much out of this. Sure, we'll be happy that everyone has health insurance (though not as happy as the insurance companies and their captive clientele) but we will also know that the Democrats failed to provide for the vast working middle and even, in some cases, taxed the kinds of benefits that we would find more to our liking.

 

Seems like the big response to "kill the bill" is that by delaying the reforms in the bill we'd be putting innocent lives at risk.  But I think the people doing that are the ones who are failing to create what was promised: a reform of the system that would have something for everybody: both insurance for the uninsured and also better, cheaper benefits for people who have been abused year after year by the existing system.

It's rare that Josh gets really sarcastic, especially at his readers who aren't me.  His entry "Goodbye, Cruel World" about readers who are fed up with recent disappoints and possibly more generally with the losses and setbacks of being the party in power is well-meaning, I'm sure but is also a little harsh.

Josh is right that in the end you either decide to participate in the process in a constructive and pragmatic way or you don't. But it's a problem that most people choose to sit out and that our system seems designed to make people decide that the sidelines are the best place to be.

If you want to pass legislation that requires people by law to buy health insurance but offers them no choices other than the companies already providing inadequate insurance at inflated prices then you really need a disinterested public if you want to close the deal. Let's not drive people away from the process.

I assume that some people writing to Josh aren't threatening to quit voting or quit following the news. Some are threatening to quit giving money to Democrats but I don't think you can criticize that -- withholding donations is as much a form of expression as making them. Some of these Democrats need to be punished in the coffers especially when they try to dip back into the online donations well.

Others I'm sure are saying they'll leave the Democratic party. Now it is on one hand ironic to leave the Democrats over Joe Lieberman but it's also a legitimate decision and one I'm considering. I could easily call myself unaffiliated or independent or I could join the Working Families Party and my beliefs wouldn't change at all. I'd give up my primary voice and that might be reason enough for me to stay a Dem but really, is a two-party system a good thing or just what we have?

I'll just end this with a couple of questions that I think are important for the audience around here: do you all identify yourselves as liberals or progressives or lefties or Democrats? I like Liberal, myself. But I definitely think more about the philosophy here than the party that represents it. I don't think it's news that a lot of Democrats wouldn't take kindly to being called "liberal" even though many liberals identify themselves as Democrats.

Next, would you take somebody leaving the party as a "Good Bye, Cruel World" moment or as an act of reasonable conviction?

And on the party question: don't even worry, not talking about voting Nader here or anything. Assume a person leaves but would be just as likely as ever to vote for Obama again in 2012....