Over at the mothership Josh asked a very reasonable question:

We spent most of Monday reporting on these tea-bagging crowds going to Democratic health care town hall meetings to shout down the hosts and shut the events down. It's classic agitprop, very akin to the 'Brooks Brothers riot' down in Florida during the recount.

But where's the other team?

Folks can whine on endlessly about outfits like Freedom Works putting these rackets together. But if the president's plan has any public support they should be able to get supporters to these events too, right? Not to pull the Black Shirt routine but to provide some public demonstration that there's real public support for making reform a reality.

If there is.

So that's the question. Where's the other team?

Allow me to answer that question as succinctly as possible:

Red Team: No! No! No! No! No! No! Stop killing old people!! Stop destroying the economy!! Stop being a socialist!! No! No! No!

Blue "Team:" We are currently scoring the health care bill in order to ensure profitability for insurance companies and debating whether the public option is preferable to the co-op option and whether the blue dogs and yellow dogs and other dogs all get fed and no we will not kill your grandmother and maybe we will raise taxes but not your taxes and maybe you will be covered by this plan but maybe you won't and we really need to look at what business really is a small business and maybe there will be a surtax or some other tax and it should save money in the long run but the CBO said it would and then they said they werent sure so just give us some time and we will answer all these questions in the meantime we will hold town halls to answer constituents' questions even though we really have no answers because we have no clear bill and what we hear from their many opinions will help us settle on a bill and we will call that bill health care reform.

Red Team: No! No! No! No!

Blue "Team:" Well, we don't have 60 votes because Byrd and Ted are sick and we don't have 58 votes because of the blue dogs and if we hold back the progressives will vote against and if we go to far the blue dogs will kill it and we need Republican votes and cloture and reconciliation and filibuster and did we mention blue dogs??

America: What in the holy hell are you people doing? We support health care reform. We support a public option. A ton of us now support single payer. We have voted you into office for (at least) two straight cycles. The right has lost its mind. What more must we do to convince you to govern?? Maybe a pretty please? With sugar on top?

Blue "Team:" If you can donate some more cash, and elect some more Democrats. If we only had 535 Democrats and a Democratic president and nine liberal SCOTUS justices, we could really get things done. Aside from that, the Republicans and the blue dogs, have we mentioned the blue dogs, will continue to obstruct the will of the people.

America: My head hurts.