Darcy was here today citing money as part of the problem. The core argument is that Conservadems are better funded than Progressives are, and so that's a problem.
...but it's not.
Corporations will always have more money, always. We have to do it with more votes and by electing people that are not beholden to corporations, and the movement has largely done that to a point where getting those Progressive votes is necessary for a good HCR bill to pass.
Want my money, support, time, energy, advocacy?
Stand firm on the minimum Progressive legislation required to achieve real health care reform, ideally with a Public Option, no mandate, and a stop order on the attack on Women's rights, which isn't even part of the discussion anyway.
What our Progressive leaders need to understand is that we went to the fucking mat this last election! Everybody went all in hard and stayed there, nose to the grindstone to see it through to success and we won that election, and we got a majority on top of that!
The simple truth is that kind of achievement comes with pretty high expectations, and one of those expectations is actually getting real reform legislated, not some corporate giveaway, laced with socially regressive Women's rights legislation, wrapped with loop holes so complex nobody will even understand them, until the next time we get screwed by them.
That's the fight Obama picked, when he ran on HCR, and that's the fight we have to see through today, or the party is going to take a blood bath as a whole lot of people, who worked their asses off, get pissed, and just go home, jaded, broke financially and politically, and we don't see the numbers to carry the effort forward.
When that happens, there is NO changing the legislation for a long time, because there is NO majority with which to change it.
I absolutely love Darcy. She is real, she is one of us, she cares, she is smart, and resolute, and just a good human being.
Darcy, you have to know that I can't go down that road of "money is the problem", "please pay more for success" this time. Can't do it.
If we can succeed in getting the minimum Progressive legislation required for material reform, then we simply are not going to get it period, and I need to see that time, energy and dollars go toward something that I know can build the movement, if we fail.
So here's how I see it:
If Progressives stand firm on the minimum things needed for reform, either no bill will pass, or Conservadems will have to go get Republicans to help them pass a bad one.
When people ask, "Why should I vote for and fund and support Progressives?" we can point right to that bad legislation, and or failure to pass productive legislation as the primary reason why we need to further grow the movement!
Progressives matter then. The people backing them know that their support is being rewarded by their representatives in Congress, just as they did to put them there!
There is absolutely no shame in this! We have the high ground, we have reasonable positions, we have a lot of support, we have a lot of votes, our numbers are bigger than they've ever been, and it's just not our problem that some Democratic party asses can't suck it up and pass real reform.
Forget the Republicans. All they want is failure. Any votes they deliver will come with really ugly, heavy strings attached that we Progressives want no part of. If Conservadems think the cost of dealing with us is too high, let them walk across the aisle vote shopping, and let them face the Progressive ADs that we will gladly pay for to help grow the movement at their expense!
Nobody Progressive is asking for anything extreme. Nobody wants to see legislation fail to pass, but nobody Progressive wants to be the sell out either, particularly after how hard we worked to convince people that this was the time to make it all happen!
No way. Whoever owns that is going to face some really ugly GOP framing, and probably some ugly Progressive framing too, as the movement will need to grow, if anything to recover from how bad the legislation really is.
For Progressives, the only loser is to sell out. In that scenario we lose the ability to grow the movement because we can't answer the question, "What good are Progressives?" because we will have taken ownership, right along with Conservadems for the bad bill, and we won't even get the corporate largess to build with, they will!
If we stand, win or lose, we win! The question is whether or not we win just the opportunity to go out there and build our movement, or we win big, and get good legislation, and still have the opportunity to build our movement!
If we sell out, it's over for lots of people, because life is ugly enough to make spending time, energy and money on people who won't actually stand up and fight not worth it.
I will gladly go to the mat again, financially and political advocacy wise, but I've got to see the movement recognize the work that went into getting us here rewarded with something I can believe in going forward.
Giving them the "not enough money out" is just a nice way of framing a big ass loss in terms of some bizzare movement as victim thing, where we just need to keep believing and paying and SOMEDAY it will happen.
No.
It can and should happen right now. Today. On this issue.
Then I will vote and pay and call and donate time and every other thing we need to keep things moving onward and upward.
UPDATE: We may find those votes can change when the very real prospect of wasting the peoples time for damn near a year might result in failure because a few Democrats can't see their way clear of selling us out.
I'll donate right now for tough, brutal ADs run to that effect. Let's see how strong those votes are, when they could be owning the failure.
That is what this all comes down to. Those sell out Dems want us to own it with them, while they get the corporate largess, and we get squat, and have to try and build our movement after selling our supporters out.
No thanks.