Hold Fast

Frank Rich: Obama has blundered, not by positioning himself too far to the left but by landing nowhere — frittering away his political capital by being too vague, too slow and too deferential to Congress. The smartest thing said as the Massachusetts returns came in Tuesday night was by Howard Fineman on MSNBC: “Obama took [...]

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There are all sorts of post-mortems on the Massachusetts Senate race today and what it means for health care reform. But Peter Daou, former Clinton internet operative, has a must-read post on the larger questions of how the Obama administration has failed to achieve its goals after one year. Daou concludes: Progressive bloggers have been [...]

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Chris Bowers is right – the process with moving the health care bill can be fouled by the results of the Massachusetts Senate special election to fill Ted Kennedy’s seat. Bowers predicts another 14-18 days before a bill is signed at best and since the MA election is on January 19th, it is hard to [...]

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I strongly agree with both Bob Herbert and Glenn Greenwald, who successfully endeavor to rebut the sophistical argument against progressives who aren’t supportive of the current health care bill as arriving at that position solely or primarily out of a quest for ideological purity. Herbert and Greenwald both focus their argument on the fact that [...]

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The Senate is set to vote on final passage of the health care bill, which should pass with something less than 60 votes. Separate from everything else, I’m glad that this is finally happening. A step in a long, long process…and hopefully one that doesn’t represent the final product of the health care bill.

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Roger Hickey of Campaign for America’s Future, a leading progressive policy and advocacy organization, has what I think is one of the best arguments in favor of progressives supporting health care reform legislation. Unlike many people urging progressives to support the legislation despite its shortcomings, Hickey is respectful and acknowledges the validity of criticism from [...]

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Robert Cruickshank, who does incredible work as the Courage Campaign’s policy director, has a must-read post at The Seminal on FireDogLake. Here is a large excerpt: The collapse of support for the bill reveals a deeper and growing divide, an unwillingness of most Americans to embrace a flawed process. In particular, progressives – activists and [...]

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Jake McIntyre has a post on Daily Kos in which he points out that parallels between supporting the Iraq war and supporting health care reform as it stands now: Has anyone else noticed that the split in the progressive blogosphere between those who are saying “it’s a good bill in spite of everything” (Kevin Drum, Matt [...]

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I’m traveling for work this week and totally booked in meetings, so my blogging is going to be very light. But I wanted to flag John Aravosis’s post from earlier today, “The GOP had at most 55 Senators during Bush’s presidency.” Aravosis is providing an important reminder that legislation, even controversial legislation or legislation relating [...]

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You know a senator has jumped the shark when Ezra Klein writes something like this: The Huffington Post and Roll Call are both reporting that Joe Lieberman notified Harry Reid that he will filibuster health-care reform if the final bill includes an expansion of Medicare. Previously, Lieberman had been cool to the idea, saying he wanted to make sure [...]

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