Dionne has a great column up today titled Progressives - don't scream: organize.
For progressives, the question on the health care battle going forward is not whether they have a right to be angry but whether they can direct their fury toward constructive ends. The alternative is to pursue a temporarily satisfying and ultimately self-defeating politics of protest.<...>
Instead of trying to derail the process - exactly what conservative opponents want to do - those on the left dissatisfied with the Senate bill should focus their efforts over the next few weeks on getting as many fixes into it as they can.
And then they can do something else: start organizing for the next health care fight.<...>
Successful political movements prosper on the confidence that they can sustain themselves over time so they can finish tomorrow what they start today.
As Dionne so rightly points out - there is one more battle to go...conference committee. While I doubt very much that major changes to the Senate Bill will result from this last stage of the process, there are still possible improvements to be made.
But even more important is the choice he lays out for a politics of protest vs organizing for the next fight.
This weekend I did some reading and writing about the Civil Rights Movement...specifically the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Certainly that victory in Montgomery has gone down as a pivotal moment not only for civil rights, but for the country as a whole. And yet if we stop and think about what was gained, it was the right to sit at the front of a bus. The movement had miles to go in organizing, activism, defeats and victories. It was an important step - but just one of many that had to be fought with skill and determination.
Our country is on the cusp of taking the first step in decades towards realizing a dream that has been shared by politicians from Truman and FDR to Senator Kennedy. Just as Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, and many others celebrated the victory in Montgomery - even while they were aware of the long road ahead - I'll celebrate this step in finally saying that the United States is a country that recognizes the rights of all of its citizens to health care. And then I'll get back to work.