Back in the dark days of this time last year (or thereabouts) when McCain had just put Palin on the ticket and it seemed like she was an asset, not the lead weight she turned out to be, I remember that quote circulating from Michelle Obama. I remember too, the image of Obama, saying, 'Chill the fuck out. I got this.' And he was right.
But he doesn't have this one. The MSM, the medical insurance companies and the raving right have it at this moment - and if they win this one, they'll have a template to win the next one, and the next, whatever that may be. Follow me below the fold for why it's necessary to regain the momentum, and how to do it.
The health care bill is diminishing by the day. It isn't lost yet, but there's no doubt the screaming tantrums from the are getting the air time and the saner voices are not.
And the same lobbyists who are stirring up the mouth-breathers on health care are gearing up to do the same for energy efficiency - see the Climate Progress blog here (also in the header).
So.... it seems to me that there's a need for some serious organizing on the left. The only way to do that is to bypass the MSM - they go for profit and it's not Medicare that pays their advertising revenues. The men in suits are all in this together and they have a huge, huge incentive to kill any kind of health care bill - after all, they're Republicans and if this passes, as Bill Kristol once said, in his infamous memo -
But the Clinton proposal is also a serious political threat to the Republican Party. Republicans must therefore clearly understand the political strategy implicit in the Clinton plan--and then adopt an aggressive and uncompromising counterstrategy designed to delegitimize the proposal and defeat its partisan purpose.
So, for the same reason, any plan passed in 2009 is going to be as toxic to the GOP as one that might have passed in 1993. Everyone knows this. Not everyone is acting as if this was a critical moment - as critical as helping to get Obama elected.
But the vehicle that achieved that election still exists, does it not? This time last year, there was a network of committed activists who were trained and competent to get out into their local communites, people who could and did, bypass the soft-ball idiots of the MSM who thought the sun shone from Sarah Palins eyeballs, and connected with real people in ways they could understand.
These people need to gear up and get out on the road. Obama may have made the network, but he doesn't own it. There's no need to wait for his permission to get it up and running again.
The Blue Dogs managed to create a delay - which may in the end, give the progressive consensus time to re-take the agenda and shift the mood of the narrative - note, not the mood of the nation, that's clearly in favor of change, but the narrative needs to penetrate the political bubble, to be heard and to result in the necessary votes.
This diary (note, I have no connections to the diarist) has some ideas on ways to bring the message home. There must be others....?