My soul hurts.

Sounds about right.

"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."

Sounds reasonable, let's do it.

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

ROFL!

Yep. Obama was so fucking positive he could get this done without Hillary.

Maybe all the lobbyist-organized tea bagger bluster makes for good tv, and yes, disrupts meetings, intimidates, bolsters astroturf movement anger and resentment, but this particular team, the red team, owned and operated by corporate conservatives, lost badly with these tactics in 2006, in November 2008, and is continuing to lose moderates in droves.

We keep saying these tactics have stalled so much progress in the last 50 years but let's not forget what's happened over the last three years. The "red" team is bleeding out. That's why they look like they're in such pain. Their clocks were cleaned during the Presidential election.

No population trends are trending in their favor.

They are being marginalized.

Their side of the debate, the specifics of their position on health care, on the economy, on Judge Sotomayor, on alternative energy, on global warming, on science, can all be summed up thusly:

"NO!!"

Don't confuse louder and madder with bigger and smarter.

Don't confuse a smaller group of wing nuts, magnified by PR and TV coverage and massive corporate sponsorship, with a larger smarter ever expanding durable political movement.

We beat this team before. Maybe the "blue" team doesn't succeed in the same manner the "red" team has in the past. Maybe the "blue" team wins differently. Obama didn't resort to negative attacks and lies and deception(although I really really wanted him to at certain points) to win.

Obama wins differently. How do we help him win?

What does a winning "blue team" look like?

Does it look angrier? Is it as loud? As mad?

I don't think so. But that doesn't mean we can't be aggressive.

How do we get aggressive with the truth?

What's the best way to disinfect wingnut-mania?

The facts.

I know. It doesn't look like that works. But it is working. You can tell by the intensity of the opposition. Don't mistake defensive intensity with offensive control.

They don't want a debate. They want a boxing match. They always want a boxing match. You know who the coach of the red team is?

Dick Armey. He's a "limousine conservative" recruiting "pick up truck conservatives" to fight for him, to be the face of his movement.

I don't care about Dick Armey or his faux movement.

It looks like this is who we are fighting but it isn't. They already lost really really badly.

I'd rather focus our smart rage on the Democrats who are so used to selling out to their corporate lords. It's almost as if they don't think they're doing anything wrong because this is the way they've been doing business for millions of years. It's how Washington works. It's almost as if they think we have no business looking into their financial ties, their "corporate incentives".

More sunlight on those incentives goes a long way.

In fact, I think it is the x-factor in this whole debate. Open secrets.org is a really powerful tool.

Revealing just how beholden these reps and senators are to corporate citizens will instantly expose how negligent they've been with average citizens.

Hold them personally accountable for everything they say, for the way they vote on a particular issue.

Don't allow them to hide behind the collective party.

Individual accountability.

Max Baucus, Democrat from Blue Cross, Blue Shield and Schering Plough?

Or Max Baucus, Democrat from the great state of Montana?

He's not up for re-election for quite a while I know. But this is how clear the choice should be to the people of Montana if and when he does run again.

Superb post! Right on the money!

This post is interesting. It neatly avoids the really obvious suggestion posed by this situation: that there really isn't a groundswell of support for greater government involvement in healthcare.

And that even if there was, Americans wouldn't trust Nancy Pelosi or Barack Obama to design it.

There are conservative activists and liberal activists. Ultimately, the single payer advocates are about as significant as the random folks shouting at Arlen Spector.

A big part of the problem is that people don't trust the government. They didn't just pull that out of their butts. They have GOOD reasons for feeling the way they do. The repubs are playing on that distrust and adding a measure of deceitful fear. The lies I hear coming out of their mouths are repugnant. But, they work, especially with the elderly and the wing nuts.

I did not start out as a fan of single pay. Really, I'm still not. I would still like to see us rein in the profits of the insurance/pharma companies, reduce waste and fraud, insure everyone, make the insurance portable and force them to insure everyone, even if they have pre-existing conditions (we managed to do it with utilities for the most part, you'd think we could apply similar measures for something we need almost as much).

But at this point I am more pissed off at and distrustful of lobbyists and the CEOs of big insurance/pharma than I am at the government, so inspite of my misgivings about single pay, I'm more inclined to go that way.

I thought Obama had more pull. I think HE thought he had more pull. But the bottom line is, the divided dems are the ones ultimately responsible for this mess. I am SHOCKED that they went home for the August recess w/o finishing such pressing business. If they gave a crap about us, they would have stayed. As far as I'm concerned, that said it all.

And Hillary? As much as my respect for her has grown since the election, I don't think she would have fared any better, and maybe because memories are so long, even worse. But, there's really no point in worrying about that until 2016 when we may get the opportunity to find out. If we are still in this mess, and she wins, maybe she'll get another chance...

As an antidote (or partial antidote) to despair, check out this Daily Kos post about progressive Dems successfully countering tea-bagging shouters at a townhall event:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/8/4/761608/-Tea-Baggers-FAIL-to-disrupt-Health-Care-meeting,-lessons-shared.

Can anyone explain why every important - no - EVERY bill, now has to have 60 votes in the Senate? They are abusing the filibuster, and the rules for that are changeable. So why not change them? Are our Democratic brethren afraid of being accused of changing the rules midstream? The answer to that is, "Too bad. If you played by any sense of honor this wouldn't be necessary."

But besides that, the original blog is accurate -- how can anyone fight for a bill that doesn't exist? It is time to get it down in writing, using the most progressive options possible. Some things should be deal-breakers, such as the absolute necessity to include affordable health care without "pre-existing conditions clauses" or "patient dumping," and the ability to negotiate prices with providers such as Big Pharma.

The team is waiting for a leader to lead, as was promised.

The first thing these meetings need is a little old-fashioned discipline. The teabaggers cheered when Bushco set up "free speech zones" to protest in, miles from the action, and in cages. Let's see how much they enjoy them now.

Similarly, most of them were gung-ho pro-police when "don't taze me bro" happened. Shoe, meet other foot.

In commemoration of the recent anniversary of the '68 Chicago police riots, let's see if they like the taste of tear gas.

Methinks they'll suddenly develop a case of "I have rights" and just possibly a new perspective very quickly...

The post is certainly right that that the pro-reform camp is hamstrung by the lack of a single message to counter the angry "No" with. No question that this is a problem.

There's another factor here that nobody seem to want to admit. There's no Blue Team because the natural players -- the progressive faction of the Democratic Party -- won't line up behind a compromise plan. Instead we get rallies for a single payer system, which isn't party of any draft coming out a Congressional committee and won't be. It's sad but true that we're either going to get a centrist health care plan or none at all.

Some posters here seem to prefer nursing sour grapes from last year's primary campaign to actually fighting for a realistic reform bill. Weakening President Obama seems to be a goal of some TPM posters. If Obama goes down, not only do we not get health reform, but we get the Republicans back, not some sort of turn to the left.

The conflation of passing legislation to sports is a poor choice.

There has to be cost savings. There has to be competition. There has to be universal coverage.

At the bottom line, this is a civil rights issue. That is where the confusion lies. The right understands that it is civil rights; the left is framing it as a piece of legislation. Health care is a civil rights movement. I can't say it often enough.