FDR is famously told his progressive supports who pushed him to do progressive things: "I agree with you. I want to do it. Now make me do it!" Our elected representatives need pressure from us to wield against the powers arrayed against us.
Why do you hear this these days? Because it isn't happening enough. We in the left want universal care. We seem to have won an election in which that was a central pillar. But making it happen is a hard slog, against entrenched powers. Our reps want our help making them do it.
But they are missing something.
Something that is personified these days by Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) who raised a ruckus by telling people that the Republican health plan is "Don't get sick, and if you do get sick, die quickly." The Republicans were outraged that a Democrat would speak that way. Apparently this is a privilege reserved to Republicans, probably by some clause in Converepidia's version of the Constitution.
His response to that was "America doesn't care about your feelings."
I have to agree. But listening to this made me realize something else: The correct response to liberal politicians saying "Make me do it" is this: "Then rally us!"
Grayson is not universally loved on the left because he's being, well, rude. The Republicans don't want people to die. They don't have that plan. It's just the obvious, natural consequence of their love of the status quo and insurance companies. Grayson connecting their choices to the tragic consequences is just impolite, really. And even imprecise.
But Grayson suddenly has a lot of fans. Finally somebody is telling the raw, emotional truth: People are going bankrupt, being crippled, and goddamn dying. This is a critical issue about people's lives, and it's well past freakin' time that we stopped being frightened by bogeymen and freakin' fixed it!
Ahem, excuse me. Got a bit carried away there.
Which is the freakin' point! For fear of seeming radical, or intemperate, or whatever, those who need us to "make them do it" need to find some way to inspire us to make them. If you don't stir people up, they won't write letters, march, call, knock on doors, and all those other things they need from us.
What Grayson is doing riles us up. It gets the juices flowing by telling the bare, honest truth bluntly and clearly.
So send him around the country, put him all over TV, find more people like him and let them have at it! This creates the energy that we need to push hard on politicians. People don't work their asses off to pressure Congress after they listen to reasoned panel discussions. They get that inspired after things called "rallies". They are called rallies because they rally people. And this requires energy.
The laws of political energy say you only get out of a system what you put into it. Someone needs to fund putting Grayson and his ilk on the airwaves, the intertubes, anywhere out front that people will see him. He will piss of the right of course, but they've opted out of the debate by sheer idiocy and lying. He will piss of some in the middle who will be turned off.
But he will rally the folks. Now is the time to make it happen. It's well past that time, actually. So we need energy, not only reasoned dialog.
Launch Grayson!
[Edited for grammar and punctuation.]