The protesters are winning even when they lose, because if the cyclopean eye of the MSM is on the protesters, then they are not talking about the merits of the various plans, and they are not talking about the reasons why we need to make progress on this issue at all.
Nate Silver has a blog up today about how the protests may be having a mild effect in favor of the protesters: 538
As an aside, I despise the overuse of the word "reform"; talking about changes to government laws as "reform" is nearly as vacuous as the phrase "rich culture" is in anthropology. I shall therefore diary about Health Care "progress". We want the HC system to progress towards certain goals.
So, I have an idea which should already have been tried; in fact, I'm mystified why this is not being done. Unfortunately, one person cannot do this alone, so I'm throwing the idea out there and hoping a bunch of us can run with it.
The basic idea is to focus the MSM on the stories of those who the current system has failed. And by failed, I mean killed. I want the MSM to be forced to talk about murder by spreadsheet.
I want quilts like the ones for AIDS victims . Every panel a person who died after their policy was canceled via rescission, or after their employer fired them when hit with a surcharge, or who died because they were uninsured.
I want websites like the ones for US casualties in Iraq.
I want adorable little girls and boys carrying signs that say "An HMO killed my mommy" and dad is standing there with a flier that backs it up.
I want the MSM - and by extension, America - to look at the pictures of the dead. These are the people you have killed by supporting the status quo. People like these will die if you maintain the status quo. Do they look like you, America? Maybe the next person murdered with a spreadsheet will be you; or your spouse; or your child.
They won't do it voluntarily. Big media are owned by those who like the status quo. We need to force them to look. We need to make the thousands and thousands of dead people count. Their voices need to speak from beyond the grave of "Murder most foul, as in the best it is, But this most foul, strange, and unnatural."
If we can do this it will not matter how many screamers show up at a town hall. It won't matter how many times Glenn Beck cries. Because most Americans still care about each other. And they won't support people who kill Americans for money's sake.