At what point do progressives stop being Democrats' whipped dogs and start acting like a movement capable of putting the Dems in their proper place as the party of the people? David Sirota wrote today about Obama's latest call to increase war spending beyond its already ludicrous proportions.

How many of the extreme right-wing and criminal policies of Bush-Cheney has Obama adopted? How many of those extreme right-wing policies has he exceeded? Last month, knowledge that Obama has gone a step further than Bush, authorizing the executive branch to murder American citizens on the flimsiest of rationales. This sh__ has GOT to end.

For the Democrats in Congress, winning in November isn't rocket science; it's about having the will to pursue survival ruthlessly. The key to winning is giving the American people what they'll like, and not allowing any of the normal Washington obstacles to stand in the way. But, for Dems to act that way depends on them changing both their beliefs and their behavior. Let's start with the beliefs.

Jon Walker over at Fire Dog Lake makes a very effective argument about why learning the wrong lesson from the defeat of Martha Coakley in Tuesday's Massachusetts Senate race will lead to disaster.

As the Democrats busily work on plans to make us all captive consumers of the private health insurers, the rich are cutting loose from the system. While we'll be stuck in costly Exchanges, the rich will be moving on toward their own privately reformed health system. Welcome to the world of concierge medicine.

In Obama's recent speech, he equated the movement to extend Medicare to all Americans with the Canadian single-payer.

There are those on the left who believe that the only way to fix the system is through a single-payer system like Canada’s where we would severely restrict the private insurance market and have the government provide coverage for everyone.” ...such a plan “would represent a radical shift that would disrupt the health care most people currently have.

He also reminded his "progressive friends" what apparently the real driving force behind health reform has been about all these years:

unless you were compromising with yourself. I'm sick of hearing the "public option was the compromise". No, it wasn't. You can't compromise on something when it's the only policy for which you have advocated. The public option, not single payer, is the demand. A compromised public option is likely to be the compromise. Improved and Enhanced Medicare for All, or single payer, was never on the table. It was never part of the negotiations, thus it was never a policy up for compromise.

President Obama appears to have completely "sold out." His approval rating plummeted, not because of Republicans, but because of how he is "negotiating" health care reform. Single-payer should have been used as a bargaining chip.

To compromise both single-payer and a public opton is to trade out health, financial stability and our nation's solvency in exchange for Blue Dog and Republican votes. This is a direct affront, and duplicitous act, against the very people who put him in office and gave him a majority in Congress to work with.

What frustrates single payer advocates the most is how they have been sidelined from the national health finance reform debate. People who support single payer, or enhanced and improved Medicare for All, have long waited for the chance to present their case to the American people for real health care reform via a single payer method. With the ever increasing cost of care, and the growing number of uninsured and under insured Americans, single payer advocates view inclusion of proposals that support a one payer system for financing health care an essential part of the debate.

h/t BDA in VA

Obama buries the public option, worries about brand image.

Via Marc Ambinder:

The Obama administration is stunned by the angry reaction of liberal Democrats after Kathy Sebelius seemed to be walking away from demands of a public option. Apparently, the administration never intended the "public option" to be a major focus of their reform efforts.

Via the Washington Post:

[At] a time when the president had hoped to be selling middle-class voters on how insurance reforms would benefit them, the White House instead finds itself mired in a Democratic Party feud over an issue it never intended to spotlight.

Is the era of new politics over? 

Via the New York Times:

WASHINGTON — Given hardening Republican opposition to Congressional health care proposals, Democrats now say they see little chance of the minority’s cooperation in approving any overhaul, and are increasingly focused on drawing support for a final plan from within their own ranks.

snip

Good.

Via the AP:

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration filed court papers Monday claiming a federal marriage law discriminates against gays, even as government lawyers continue to defend the law.

Justice Department lawyers are seeking to dismiss a suit brought by a gay California couple challenging the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act. The administration's response to the case has angered gay activists who see it as backtracking on campaign promises made by Barack Obama.

In the court papers, the administration urges the repeal of the law but says in the meantime, government lawyers will continue to defend it as a law on the books.

A new poll finds Canadians overwhelmingly love their health care and oppose the Canadian Medical Association's proposal to privatize their health care system:

New poll shows Canadians overwhelmingly support public health care  

Group says advocates of private system are out of touch with most Canadians

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Aug. 12, 2009

Contact:
Michael McBane, national coordinator, Canadian Health Coalition, (613) 277-6295, www.medicare.ca

Last Tuesday night I emailed Barney Frank(my rep.) after becoming incensed with his recent comments claiming advocating for Medicare for All, which he’s “always supported” was “suicide”. I told Mr.

She's just going to scare the old folks to death.

Via Big Tent Democrat:

Really bringing the stupid - the new leader of the idiots - Sarah Palin:

As more Americans delve into the disturbing details of the nationalized health care plan that the current administration is rushing through Congress, our collective jaw is dropping, and we’re saying not just no, but hell no!

. . . The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.

Sometimes your words come back to haunt you. I know I had an exchange with someone here about what a jackass Bill Maher is. And, whomever it was said yeah, but sometimes he's right...and I said, no he's a sexist tool who has nothing worthwhile to offer. You only like him when you agree with him, yada, yada, yada. Well, tonight he most definitely has something to offer. If you have HBO, watch. Tell your friends to watch. Tell your neighbors to watch. Tell your Congressperson to watch.

Via PNHP.org

Obama’s doctor on Bill Maher’s show Aug. 7

Pa. House sends health insurance bill to Senate

HARRISBURG - A bill to open Pennsylvania's government-subsidized health-insurance program to 85,000 more lower-income adults won House approval yesterday.

But the chances of this bill reaching Gov. Rendell's desk appear bleak.

While passage had been a priority of House Democrats, who symbolically numbered it House Bill 1, only a single Republican representative crossed party lines in the 104-96 vote.

The lines of battle over the economic salvation of America and our working class are now crystal clear. It is Republicans and BlueDogs together on one side, acting in furtherance of the same Corporatists who ran public policy under Reagan and the Bushs, versus the rest of us.

So my job is the push the new administration "from the left," if my blogging can said to have a constructive purpose. It's always fun to read more popular bloggers when they get snarky and angry in the way I'm prone to be most of the time, as I review the proposals and behaviors of the new administration. No one here is shocked by the already numerous "disappointments" from the administration, but I do wonder how long the majority in this country is going to keep giving Obama high approval ratings. I also wonder if getting punked by Republicans is a successful strategy in the effort to keep them high.

To me, it's completely obvious: no Dem administration is ever going to get more than a handful of Republicans to go along with anything that Dems propose. Republicans oppose Democratic initiatives, always. And the rare times when they don't oppose something the Dems propose, it's because they better understand the deep strategies and gamesmanship, and how to play the 'fake' of temporary support followed by later opposition. But expecting widespread Republican support for any Democratic initiative is just plain stupid. And ignorant of recent history. And perhaps cowardly, and incompetent.

The only place that the new administration needs to focus its love of "bipartisanship" is in the Senate. And frankly, the whole "post-partisan/bi-partisan" strategy is a foolish one, even there. A smarter strategy would be to identify electorally weak Republican members of the Senate, and use executive authority to pressure them to go along with key Democratic initiatives when there is the need for the few extra votes. Really, it's quite simple.

If the new administration wants anyone intelligent to believe that they are truly members of the Democratic party, and not the "Unity" party, it's relatively straighforward, in terms of what they should do.

-ignore the media, (unless they want to bring back something like the Fairness Doctrine, which I'm all for) which at this point is a wholly-owned creature of entities completely hostile to Democratic Party platform goals and aims
-don't bother to grant all but a few of the least significant legislative compromises to Republicans in the House, perhaps a few more in the Senate
-rally and sustain liberal electoral support with progressive policies that aren't just politically smart, but good for the economy (which is true for most progressive policies)
-keep Republicans off-balance with much needed investigations and restructuring of Federal offices, which serves the health of the Constitution at the same time

I don't really expect any of this from new administration, and indeed I expect a lot of the opposite. But I just felt like expressing as simply as I can, that "it's not that hard" to be a real, liberal Democrat right now. The Administration is enjoying popularity at the polls, the party isn't doing to badly in terms of fundraising, and the nation as a whole is ready for real "change," in addition to the musical teevee kind.

One thing I'm very sure about: if the Obama administration continues to act like members of the Unity Party, it will be responsible for significant Dem losses in the House and Senate in 2010, and risk a very real chance of becoming a one-term failure by 2012. In the spirit of "it's the economy, stupid" the bi-partisan proposals that please Republicans (tax cuts, deregulation, endless military spending) are exactly what got us into the mess, and will only exacerbate our situation further if allowed to continue/be increased. Again, this isn't rocket science, it's a simple review of the recent history of economic policy and the results.

There is a Republicans for Single Payer group. Please forward the link to your Republican friends. The idea will seem less threatening if it comes from a Republican voice.

There are many Republicans today who are out of work and just discovering the hard realities of the American Health Neglect System. I am not just talking about unemployed White House or Capitol Hill operatives, I mean rank and file Republicans all over the country. They are going to start bringing their health care nightmare's to their Senators, and with luck that will give us the opening we need.

This post is the first of a series preparing for Thursday's National Call in Day. Some general considerations in contacting politicians:

In a post-anthrax world it is necessary to use the web/email contact form, telephone, or personal visit to the district office. Regular mail is delayed for weeks because of post-anthrax security procedures.

ALWAYS be courteous. It is not possible to over emphasize the importance of this.

ALWAYS be brief and to the point. No one has time to read your flowing periods. That is what blogs are for.

Quite a list here of who he's meeting with and learning from, and those supposedly "sensible Republicans" are far outnumbered by the usual warmongering criminal ones -- but all is not lost: he's actually read 2 whole books by non-warmongers! (but not spoken to them or met with them or asked them for advice)

A World of Issues Waiting, Obama and His Foreign Policy Squad Brush Up --

... Besides reaching out to Mr. Scowcroft, Mr. Obama has also called former Secretary of State George P. Shultz, a Reagan administration official who is known in some foreign policy circles as the father of the Bush doctrine because of his advocacy of preventive war. It is unclear what the two men talked about.

So I'm deep in Republican territory, showing off my black ass and wearing all my UChicago gear, this week. It's interesting. The people around here are upper class rich, but not uberrich. Out and about, here's some useless data point stuff. Because Lambert keeps stealing all my post ideas, it's the best I can do.

-What is it with skinny blonde moms with really big families? Like, poppin out a kid every year until there are so many of them it's hard to count if they're not standing still? I'm talking younger moms, obviously wealthy, the sort your average white Amercian patriarch goes for, "trophy" wives. When I was young, not many of the kids at my (private, populated by Republican spawn) school were from very large broods. But for the last few years, I've noticed more and more of these birthing-olympics moms in tony suburbs. Poor people have always believed children are their wealth, but I seem to remember a time when one of the perks of being a trophy wife is that all you had to produce was 'an heir and a spare.' Has that changed?

-The bailout doesn't seem to be popular here either.

[Do read the comments. --lambert]