Wanna know who's to blame if there is no public option?

Just look in the mirror.

We castrated the Democratic Party when we sacrificed our principles as progressives so we could keep Bill Clinton and the Democrats in power in the 1990's. We stayed loyal to the Party, no matter what was passed. Whether it was NAFTA, Telecommunications Act, Welfare Reform, or whatever. We never spoke up because we did not want to sabotage Bill Clinton or the Democratic Party. Now we are reaping the results.

We have a castrated Democratic Party that has no balls. They don't remember why they are Democrats. The Party is no longer about legislating from principles, but only legislating to remain in power. They have no backbone. They look for compromise with the radicals at their own risk.

It's sad. But we created this Party with our own actions or inactions. We cannot escape responsibility.

plenty of our 'leaders' then are around now.

they should have learned.

more -- why do we always have to get SO angry as to burn the house down to get people who KNOW what the right thing is to do -- to do it?

it's a waste.

http://www.pnhp.org/

Because they have the neeerve to question our chosen leaders and undermine their credibility with all their influence and political sway

esp with Obama's election...I say it is the other way around. They abandoned us.

After everything you did for progressives in all that time, they just abandoned you in the cold. Its Shakespearean. Those cold, calculated, treasonous idealist.

He is trying to get passed what he thinks is possible. Unfortunately, many in our Party are against him.

He is trying to get passed what he thinks is possible (with some Republican votes).

Personally, I could give a rat's ass what the Republicans want.

Passing Health Care Reform with 51% is fine by me.

If some Republicans want to join in the effort, great.

If they don't... fuck 'em.

:shrug:

We thought we had sacrificed enough? We were ready for progressive change. But our Party is simply not capable of the change that is needed.

Unions - Bad

Liberals - Bad

Universal (Socialist) Health Care - Bad

Government Assistance For People - Bad

Etc.

And all this under an elite Liberal media.

Will wonders never cease???

:shrug:

:hi:

His wife has even more.

Nice try

Balls work better when applied to progressive principles, Not republican ones like the DLC possess.
Nice try, but it takes more than the balls to vote as republican-lite if you ever wish to repair a republican mess.

Hurrr-fucking-A

It's not that they do not have balls, it's that many have sold us out to corporate interests.

Do not fail to appreciate the positive effects of just slowing the Reagan roll, even just a little. Also, we lost Congress the very next election so I think the history is a little off too. We got hammered for even the slightest expression of our principles, whack a mole style, and had to play Republican-lite not only to function ourselves but literally to keep the government going since the Republicans went nuclear obstruction and shut down everything over mundane budgets, much less any "progressive" move.

If Obama lets Bush and Cheney off the hook, he's no better than them.

If Obama lets Bush and Cheney off the hook, he's no better than them.

W and Dick should both die in US custody and their families should forfeit their blood-bought estates.

At least then we could no longer deny the shit we're in.

Instead, the Democratic leadership keep papering the walls with inspirational posters so we'll feel better about getting screwed.

Enough!

We are trying to climb out but some in our own Party are trying to pull us back down into the doody.

Not all democrats are serious about ending poverty, but no republican is. This is only one example. So what do we do? If we split the party, the republicans win. If we don't we get what we have right now. Neither is good enough.

The 2 party thing is virtually impossible to undo once it gets going. No party wants to be the first to blink. The only noticable changes are when the center drifts from left to right. I think the center is poised to move left, but much too slowly for our tastes. I don't know what to do except to keep trying to educate the masses.

But the Democrats are afraid to stand up for any progressive ideas. Why is that?

The Democrats include progressives, and the Republicans are conservative. Right now the GOP is contracting to its idealogical core. Democratic numbers are growing faster than progressiveness itself. While far from perfect, I'd rather argue about how to govern with Democrats than count the days to the next election with the Republicans in charge.

there's not a whole lot of difference between who owns Democrats and who owns republicans. There's a thread floating around GD that congress and senate critters should be forced to wear Nascar jackets with the sponsors vividly advertised.

I like it.

We don't fight for ourselves, so our representatives don't fight for us.

Simplest thing in the world, unfortunately.

When has Congress looked out for the interests of Americans?

They allowed NAFTA and jobs were exported FAST, leaving cities and rural communities without low skilled steady jobs.

The Greens, and Naderites, and Kucinich voters may have done the lion's share of the heavy lifting to defeat Hillary and then McCain, but the votes which actually elected Obama President are something on the order of ten times the size of the number that I think you would consider "progressive".

The far left didn't castrate the Democrat Party as a rule, they abandoned it and only rejoined for this election. Exactly how much power would you expect them to claim? It might have been their work that put him over the top, but it certainly wasn't their numbers.

But I seriously question that the progressives in the Party are out-numbered ten to one? Or, if so, the other 90% are happy with this blue dog bullshit...

The coming of a anti-corporate party is on it's way, a few more good sell-out's and just like Iraq defrocked the Republicans it will just happen

I grew up with Tammany Hall Democrats as my Democratic party, and the other half of the party was Southern segregationists who all suddenly turned Republican when Lyndon Johnson let the black folk vote. Reform Democrats were all over the place, but the reform was mainly to get back in power. And don't get me started about the phony Liberal Party whose only function was to extort cash from Democrats who needed to be on the Liberal line in some neighborhoods. The Conservative Party out here is pulling the same trick-- taking bids from Democrats and Republicans to get the votes of the same kinds of dumb shits as those old Liberals who don't read names, just party lines.

No less than four years ago I lived in New Jersey under the thumbs of the urban Democratic machines. No candidate ran without the order from the county leader, and not a penny of party of gummint money got spent without going through his office. You may have read about the 40 or so Joisey officials just busted over there-- every one a Democrat.

I'm a registered Democrat because there are only two games in town and I like this one better-- it usually comes closer to what I beleive, not because it's all creampuffs and roses.

So, just what is it about the Democratic party that gets people all misty-eyed when they wax so prolific about its lost ideals and try to lay blame for its even more lost innocence? Ya'd think FDR was just yesterday, Nixon didn't give us the EPA, and Ike didn't win the war.

how can we ever expect anything to change? That is the problem. And we will continue to live with the results of such thinking.

you have to build a large organization to take on the established organizations, not just talk about it. I went to too many meetings where everyone bloviated about how bad things were but no one could get more than three people together to "stand up" to the established organization. And two of those three people had nothing to lose.

Corey Booker spent years building his organization from the streets up, and finally threw Sharpe James out of Newark's City Hall. Funy thing, though, after several failed attempts, he finally won when James decided to retire. I've been away too long to know how things are working, but it will be interesting to see if Booker takes down the entire corruption and patronage network, or just polishes the surface of it. Or sets up his own.

and he is a very impressive leader.

But if people can get together to elect a black man President of the United States, that is quite an accomplishment. It was an "organization" of progressives and grassroots and people looking for "change" that put Barack Obama in the White House.

That is the reality of where we are today. As for health care reform, I tend to agree with the argument that once a plan is put forward with specifics, then it may be easier to defend and more difficult to defeat. At the present time, Barack Obama has only put forth the "idea" of reform. It is much easier to attack an "idea" than it is the reality of specifics, in my opinion.

I bet the third party would get 20% of the vote in 2012 if the Dems and Repubs keep being incompetent douchbags.

that is the direction we are headed, probably to our own demise? But it is that fear that has prevented the change that is needed. The last time we refused to act on those fears, we got George W Bush - not the other way around.

I feel at least partially responsible for the pathetic state of the Democratic Party. I admit that I defended Clinton when I should not have in the 1990s.

Of course, RW media, Newt Gingrich, and Ronald Reagan bear a lot of the blame too, but Progressives are also culpable for supporting Clinton and the DLC.

:dem:

-Laelth

We just have no real leverage. What are we supposed to do, write letters and call politicians? Sign petitions? I have done all that, they don't seem to care. When 3/4 of the public support something and industry does not, and the politicians side with industry, what are the public supposed to do? In the days of unions we could have a mass strike. We need better civil disobedience.

I donated over $1000 in the 2008 election cycle. I also volunteered to remind people to vote. It is not my fault if politicians are owned by corporate interests. I did not buy them. I fought to elect politicians who I thought were not going to be bought out. I do not think Obama is a sell out, but other dems who I had no hand in electing (blue dogs, conservadems in the senate) are the ones holding things back. But I did nothing to elect them. If you want to bitch at Rahm Emmanual for electing blue dogs have at it. But I didn't do it.

The dems lost power in 1994. People like Dick Morris (who is now a diehard GOP supporter and Fox news pundit) are responsible for theories of triangulation, designed to coopt the right wing. So I don't see how we gave up our principals so the dems could keep power. They didn't have power from 1994-2006.

And I think there are 'some' balls in the democratic party. the Progressive caucus and I think the tri-caucus will not support a bill w/o a public option.

The real thing is we DO have real leverage, we just don't always use it. I would remind you as a $1000 donor that people like you DID get Obama elected and that IS a huge difference over McCain. I agree that signing petitions and so forth can be useless, but I think its easy to think that this is all we can do, when our power to affect things is really much larger than that. What I wonder is to what extent we have become stagnant in our strategies... street marches, letter writing, when I think that if we really sat down and thought, we'd find there are things much, much more effective in the 21st century.