Today,"centrist" Senators Ben Nelson (D-NE), Joe Lieberman (N-CT), Mary Landrieu (D-LA), Olympia Snowe (R-ME), Susan Collins (R-ME), and Ron Wyden (D-OR) decided to band together to try to thwart the effors of the administration and the Democratic leadership to get a healthcare bill passed by August.  In typically smarmy coded prose, they leapt on the CBO's inability to measure reductions in health care costs that aren't specifically mandated by Congress to try to stall the bill until after the August recess. 

. . . in view of [CBO Director Doug Elmendorf's] statement [that, based on an incomplete analysis by CBO under rules that don't allow CBO to recognize savings ], there is much heavy lifting ahead. We support the efforts of the Finance Committee to produce a bipartisan bill, despite calls from both sides of the aisle to rush forward or delay indefinitely.  While we are committed to providing relief to American families as quickly as possible, we believe taking additional time to achieve a bipartisan result is critical for legislation that affects 17 percent of our economy and every indvidual in the U.S. 

We look forward to working with you to develop legislation that is vital to the well-being of the American people and urge you to resist timelines which prevent us from achieving the best results blah de blah de blah de blah.

July 17, 2009 letter by Slimey Six to Senate Democratic and Republican leadership (emphasis and blah de blahs added).   

 Brian Beutler has a more sophisticated analysis than mine of the motives and actions of the Slimey Six and wisely recommends following Obama's perrenial advice not to get caught up in the breathless news cycle and "turn every microdevelopment into a make or break moment for progressive change"  That's usually my line, indeed my creed.  Hell, I'm even one of the people who kind of rolls his eyes at the word "progressive."  I doubt that these self-important asshats are going to be able to slow down progress. 

But, seriously, the problem is equally on both sides of the aisle?  "bipartisan bill?"  "Bipartisan result?"  Who the hell do they think they're fooling?  They're in the damn Senate.  They know the score.  There isn't going to be any "bipartisan solution."  The Republicans only objective is to kill it.   We know it.  Reid knows it.  Obama knows it.  It is absofrakkinglutely impossible that the Slimey Six don't it because, they're in the goddam Senate.  The mere fact that they sent this letter to McConnell as if he or anyone in his rotting animated corpse of a party have ever, at any point, had the slightest intention of allowing health reform to happen is intself an insult to the intelligence of anyone with half a brain who's been even half-assedly  following this issue.   (A description which, unfortunately, excludes Wolf Blitzer and most of the Beltway MSM). 

So what are the Slimey Six doing this and why today?  Whose side are they on and whose agenda are they serving? 

Well, by the most remarkable coincidence, on the same day the Slimesters sent their letter to Reid and McConnell, good ol' Sen. Jim DeMint made the answer to that question perfectly clear.  Today, DeMint frankly explained how delaying a vote on health care reform until after the August recess is crucial to their plan to both stop health care reform and "break" Obama:

Conservative leaders will push delay any vote on health care reform until after the August recess to capitalize on what they say is a growing tide of opposition to reform measures, they said on a conference call with "tea party" participants today.

"I can almost guarantee you this thing won't pass before August, and if we can hold it back until we go home for a month's break in August," members of Congress will hear from "outraged" constituents, South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint said on the call, which was organized by the group Conservatives for Patients Rights.

"Senators and Congressmen will come back in September afraid to vote against the American people," DeMint predicted, adding that "this health care issue Is D-Day for freedom in America."

"If we're able to stop Obama on this it will be his Waterloo. It will break him," he said.

The founder of Conservatives for Patients Rights told the 104 participants in the call, which was organized to coincide with the National Tea Party Patriots group's protests at the offices of members of Congress today, that polling suggests majorities oppose a "government take-over," which is how Scott's group casts the Obama plan.

Rep. Mike Pence, also on the call, also said the tide is turning.

"Every single day more dems are expressing op to government-run health care," he said.

Ben Smith's Politico blog, 7/17/09, 12:31 pm (bold facing and italics added, hyperlinks in original.) 

(Parenthetically, being a Politico tool, Ben, of course, didn't feel the need to note that "Conservatives for Patient Rights" is an astroturf front group funded by the guy who founded HCA and ran it until he was outsted in the wake of a multi-million dollar Medicare fraud scandal and set up by the same folks behind the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth.)   

So whose agenda are the Slimey Six serving?  Whose side are they on?  Do the math.  It's easy as 2+2.   

And that's my insight for the day.  The Slimey Six may not be able to affect the timetable and their letter today may be yet another futile corrupt Blue Dog fart in a hurricane, but it crystalized for me that the time has come when sides must be chosen.  DeMint, although completely insane, made both the stakes and the opposition's strategy clear.  Delay health care until after the August recess.  Harness the the teabaggers and the rest of the astroturf battlebots that the sociopathic insurance industry flacks have been buying since the mid-90s  to generate some phony constituient traffic to the offices of selected congressmen or senators from purple states or districts.  Upon receipt of these missives, these congressmen will lose bladder control, ignore the polls showing public approval for a public option remains highand vote to kill the public option and, if they're really scared, the whole bill.  Health reform dies, Obama's political capital is gutted oh, P.S. and by the way, so is the entire liberal agenda . 

Grandiose?  Yep.  Delusional?  Maybe, but we dare not take the risk. 

As former CIGNA PR executive Wendall Potter made clear, the insurance companies have been preparing for this fight since they killed the Clinton reform effort. (Yes, I linked twice.  His interview with Amy Goodman is, in my view, even more important than his Senate testimony  last month.)  In close coordination with their allies in the GOP and conservative media, they are preparing to spend tens of millions of dollars if they can delay a vote until after the August recess.  They want to take advantage of the traditional August MSM Mind Meltdown--the "dog days" period when the cable asshats' brains traditionally turn into liquid shit and ooze out of their ears--to pump so much Luntz-approved disinformation into the air that people get scared and scream for their Congresscritter to save them from the socialists.  And, of course, there will be sockpuppets aplenty on the blog comments (they're already showing up at TPM, did you notice?) and lots and lots of oh so very sincere letters to the editors in the eighteen surviving local newspapers in America. 

And that brings me to my real message tonight, which I offer in the hope that those to whom it is directed will at least give it a little consideration before they rush into the comments to call me a dissent-suppressing jackbooted fascist or a fawning Obama cultist. 

There are still a lot of folks on the left of the ideological bellcurve who are adament about the need for a single player plan or who are otherwise upset with one provision or another in one or another of the bills that they deem "sellouts."  More power to you. If we didn't have all this pesky political, social and historical reality to deal with, I'd be over there with you.  As it happens, we do and, as Howard Dean noted tonight on Democracy Now, whether the continuation of private insurance with regulation and a public option it is the best, most economically efficient or socially desirable plan is quite irrelevant.

Yeah, look, I don't position myself against single payer, but I position myself for giving the American people a choice. I think what the President understands is the country is a conservative country with a small "c." That is, they want change, but like most human beings, they don't want so much that they're uncomfortable. And so, the genius of the Obama healthcare plan is it's not the healthcare plan that an academic would write in the ivory tower, but it starts from where we are, not where we would have been

* * *

The thing I love about Obama's plan is it's politically practical. Instead of saying, "This is the right thing to do," as Dr. Young said, "and this is what we're going to do," he says, "Look, you decide for yourself. We're going to give you an example. We're going to allow people under sixty-five to sign up for what people over sixty-five have. And you make the choice." And what we're all betting is that the private--and I agree with his comments about the private insurance industry. Their behavior has been reprehensible, cutting people off when they have illnesses and charging huge--executive salaries of the big three are over $20 million. The guy that runs CMS, which has a billion claims a year, probably makes $150,000 or $200,000. I mean, it's ridiculous. Let the American people choose. If they make the choice themselves, they will invest emotionally in this system, and I think that the insurance industry will be forced to behave in a much better way, or they will be put out of business. But it will be themselves that's putting themselves out of business, and the American people, not the Congress, doing it.

I highly recommend this broadcast and encourage everyone to listen to it or read the transcript at the link above.  I found Dean's argument tonight to be the most pursuasive one in favor of the way they're trying to do this than any I've heard yet.  He talked me past my own real ambivelence and onto the bandwagon in a way that no one else had managed to do before.  

But DeMint's "Waterloo" statement is what really made me commit.  He's the one who conviced me that, though it makes me gag a little say something so Shrubby, we have arrived at one of those rare moments when the knuckleheaded platitude is true: if you're not with us, you're with them--with DeMint and CIGNA and Luntz. This is the with us or against us moment and its not just healthcare that's at stake.  The Republicans have gathered themselves for this one last counterattack against our agenda--to the extent we can quit squabbling and agree on what that might be.  If they win this, not just healthcare but everything we hope to accomplish over the next decade could set it back for years, or even another generation. 

Conversely, however, if we win this, we break them.  Once and for all.  Or at least for a long, long time. 

So I'm not calling on anyone who's passionate about single payer to STFU and and get on board for the big public option win.  Quite the contrary.  Your pressure is indispensible.  If, by some miracle, you get enough of the public on your side to win the debate, I'll cheer. Even if you don't win, however, the pull you are generating from the left is essential to counter the black hole to the right that's trying to suck reform into annhilation.    

However, if you're in the "no reform would be better than less reform than I demand" camp, you are. Jim DeMint's bitch.  Frustrating though you may find what you perceive as Obama's tepid incrementalism, he is doing something that is absolutely critical to the left's ability to implement its agenda--he is steadily pulling the center line of political opinion leftward.  Everytime he succeeds in accomplishing one of his tepid incrementalist goals with public support, formerly "leftist" ideas becomes mainstream opinion.  Help Jim DeMint kill reform and the mainstream backlashes rightward against the useless, chaotic Democrats. That's their plan.  For that reason alone, if you don't pick a side one will be chosen for you.  The Slimey Six have chosen.  Will you join them?