Hey buddy, I want to know what happened to the guy who co authored Crashing the Gate: Netroots, Grassroots and the Rise of People Powered Politics. This book changed my life. It made me realize that I could make a difference and that I wasn’t the only democrat who had doubts about the Democratic Party establishment. You talked about how the Democratic establishment’s thirst for corporate cash had put them out of touch with common folks like me. You encouraged us to use this new technology to share ideas, bring new candidates forward and pool money from small donors.
So we are doing these things and you suddenly become incoherently angry because some jack leg conservative pundit posits that liberals will accept terrible treatment of immigrants if they could get single payer healthcare out of it? Are you serious? Do you really think liberals would support Trump’s outrageous treatment of immigrants if he offered single payer health care to us? That is an insult sir, and you should apologize to everyone on this site for it.
I don’t know what happened to you but I do know you are better than this. Together we kicked Joe Lieberman out of the party; we nominated and elected the first African American president — something I never thought I would see in my lifetime. And we passed a healthcare plan that improved the lives of tens of millions of people and will probably remain in place. And there are many other laws and executive orders improving the lives of millions that we enacted. And then 2016 happened and we went into this shame spiral. And I plead guilty to saying things that made it worse also. Let me tell you how I am trying to get out of it. I think the only way to get things back on track is to hold our party leaders accountable. You said it yourself 11 years ago. If they are not held accountable, we will continue to experience the things you talked about in your book — failure in elections that leads to savage treatment of defenseless humans by Republicans.
Now let’s get into the meat of this ridiculous assertion: First, it comes from the Weekly Standard and Jonathan Last, an institution and an author dedicated to promoting Republicans. When I went there, I got a pop up inviting me to a retreat with Bill Kristol and some other Repub Yahoo’s. Second, this is a classic debate tactic — submitting a Faustian choice to paint the opponent in a corner. Guess what you do? You don’t take it! You tell the person that life is not a zero sum proposition and we don’t ever have to give up anything to get something that we should have anyway on its own merits. You tell these guys to step out from behind their story and get to the AND. We want humane treatment of immigrants AND we want universal health care. (Single payer is one way to get universal health care. There may be better ways, read your own blog, Kos, instead of spending so much time on the Weekly Standard).
Just so we are clear, you insulted thousands of Bernie supporters on this site because you think Jonathan V Last of the Weekly Standard is correct (I hope I am wrong here) when he states that Bernie supporters would accept this Faustian choice. There was no polling or data to support it, just his ( and I suspect your’s) opinion. Well ok, please let me know if you agree with Last so we can both make a decision that we should part ways.