Mr. President, September is upon us. IT IS TIME TO FIGHT.

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"The problem is the Democratic Party," said Moyers. "This is a party that has told its progressives — who are the most outspoken champions of health care reform — to sit down and shut up. That's what Rahm Emanuel, in effect, the chief of staff of the White House, told progressives when they stood up as a unit in Congress and said, no public insurance option, no health care reforms."

Moyers said that, over the years, the Democratic Party "has become like the Republican party — deeply influenced by corporate money."

"I think Rahm Emanuel, who is a clever politician, understands that the money for Obama's reelection would come primarily from the health industry, the drug industry and Wall Street, and so he is a corporate Democrat who is destined, determined that there would be something in this legislation — if we get it — that will turn off those powerful interests."

Moyers had some advice for President Barack Obama, as well.

"There's a fear that Barack Obama will become the Grover Cleveland of this era," said Moyers. Grover Cleveland was a good man, but he became a conservative Democratic president because he didn't fight the interests. ... I would much rather see Barack Obama be Theodore Roosevelt. Theodore Roosevelt loved to fight. He came into office and railed against the malefactors of great wealth, and he was glad to take them on. ...

"I think if Obama fought, instead of finessed so much, he stood up and declared for what is really the right thing to do and what is really needed instead of negotiating the corners away, instead of talking about bending the curve, and talking about actuarial rates, if he were to stand up and say, 'We need this because we're a decent country', I think it would change the atmosphere."

Moyers said that conservatives have dominated the debate over health care lately. "In the last few weeks, the right wing has been winning the debate. How (Obama) lost control of the narrative, I don't understand. Well, yes, I do. He didn't find the right metaphors, as you were just saying, and he didn't speak in simple powerful moral language. He was speaking like a policy wonk to the world of Washington, not a country of people who are hurting. ...

"Here's the party that lost and the conservative movement that was discredited over the last eight years .... They're setting the agenda for a Democratic Party that controls the White House, the Senate and the House. Something's wrong in that."

Watching the gun-toting, Nazi-sign-holding town hall crazies, the talk radio charlatans, and the Palin-infected politicos, my first instinct has been to rally around President Obama and defend his handling of the health care debate against this Cuckoo's Nest menagerie.
But my better instinct has prevailed over my protective instinct. It's time to take a cold, hard look at how the president's leadership -- or, more accurately, his lack of leadership -- on health care has helped create the vacuum that allowed these fringe-dwellers and their preposterous claims to dominate the debate.

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Instead of laying out his vision for reform in unequivocal strokes -- drawing clear lines in the sand on what he will and won't accept in a bill -- Obama's plan is apparently whatever Charles Grassley and Max Baucus and Kent Conrad will accept. The president "guaranteed" he'll get reform done. But we're not worried that there will be no bill to which Obama affixes his signature. We're worried that the bill will be the equivalent of a Social Security bill containing Clark's poison pill amendment. And we are even more worried that the president will sign it, declare victory, and move on.

This is where Obama the pied piper, who builds consensus by charming and seducing, has to give way to Obama the leader who brings about change by laying down the law. This is not an issue where you are going to be able to get all the stakeholders together and have the health care equivalent of a beer summit, with everyone walking away singing Kumbaya. The president needs to drop the delusional notion that there is some perfect plan that will make everyone happy, from insurance companies to PhRMA to the people who want the government to keep its hands off of Medicare.

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Speaking of the entrenched interests arrayed against him, FDR said: "Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me -- and I welcome their hatred." Obama, on the other hand, welcomes these entrenched interests into the Oval Office and invites them to amputate another limb off health care reform and dump it in the garbage on the way out.

Such is the desire for real reform that even the poorly explained -- and only fitfully supported by the White House -- public option (which, it's worth noting, is already a half-a-loaf compromise from a Medicare-for-all single-payer plan) still has 77 percent support among the public.

But Kent Conrad is telling us again and again that "there are not the votes" for a public option. And Marc Ambinder reported last week that "privately, White House aides have communicated to the House leadership that the onus on changing minds about the public plan is on Congress, not on the president."

That is not, to say the least, leadership.

The issue that is, for now, the defining moment of Obama's presidency is itself at a defining moment.

The president has, rightly -- finally -- started speaking of health reform as a "moral imperative." If he really believes that it is a moral imperative, then the time for dealing with those who oppose it needs to come to an end. Martin Luther King, Jr. didn't march on Selma so Rosa Parks could sit two rows up from the back of the bus.

During the campaign, Obama frequently said that this wasn't about him, but about all of us. That's true, but we're now at a juncture where it actually is about him.

The president has the leadership skills to reclaim this debate and take it directly to the American people, sidestepping -- or running over, if need be -- those who have decided to stand in the way of real change.

Sen. James Inhofe (R) of Oklahoma says he will vote against the healthcare reform bill before reading it. The Republican insisted: "I don't have to read it, or know what's in it. I'm going to oppose it anyways.”

Republicans will repeal healthcare reform legislation if they win control of Congress because of that bill, a key Republican pledged late Sunday.

The health bill is "dead on arrival" in Congress, said Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), the ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce committee, said during an interview on Fox News.

"If they somehow manage to get the votes and get enough Democrats to walk the plank and commit suicide, in the next Congress, I'll be chairman Joe Barton of the Energy and Commerce committee, and we'll repeal it," Barton said. .....

“We will be ready when we are ready,” Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), who is negotiating with Baucus and Grassley, said on “Fox News Sunday.” “We will not be bound by any deadline.”

"We need more police!"--- Senator Max Baucus (D-Mont.), as single-payer activists request to be heard at his town hall meeting

“They’ll pass some weak, mediocre plan that breaks the bank and even in the best analysis leaves 37 million people uninsured,” says Mokhiber, one of the single-payer activists arrested by Baucus. “It’s going to give universal health care a bad name.”

Grassley repeatedly distanced himself from the Democratic plans to reform the health care system.

"We don't have any bill. We may never have a bill," Grassley said, offering few indications that he expected to reach a deal with Democrats.

Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, called President Obama and Speaker Nancy Pelosi “intellectually dishonest” on Tuesday, saying that Democrats were using the flap over end-of-life consultations to divert attention away from health care legislation currently being considered in the House.

The Iowa Republican, while not explicitly mentioning euthanasia or rationing of care, also said that he did not want government policy to “treat life at age 85 different than we do life at 35.” (At a town hall meeting last week in Adel, Iowa, the senator said, “We should not have a government plan that will pull the plug on grandma.”)

If the President were to channel a little of Bobby's "ruthlessness" and LBJ's legendary arm-twisting horse trading, here's what he should do. Draw a line in the sand and give the Republicans an ultimatum. "This is as far as I'm willing to compromise; you can get on this train now, and be constructive, or you can stay behind at the station as the Democrats steer this nation into a future of promise, opportunity, and quality, affordable healthcare for all. Your choice." To the Blue Dog Democrats, the President should simply say: "Not supporting this plan is untenable for the Democratic Party. Stand with me, and I'll go all out and work for your re-election. Stand against me, and you're on your own." LINK