I have been accused of being a "moderate" here on the Daily Kos, which is laughable to anyone who knows me personally. I have also been accused of being a sell-out because I advocate fighting hard on behalf of passing health care reform in whatever eviscerated form it takes, because its defeat spells political disaster for the Democrats in 2010 and 2012.
Now it seems that many Progressives will get their wish much sooner than they expected, because Scott Brown is poised to win the special election in Massachusetts for Ted Kennedy's senate seat.
Having lost the PR battle over health care reform, with a huge assist from the misguided outrage on the left, Obama now stands to lose the entire war.
Brown's election would spell the end of Obama's agenda and likely lead to huge Republican gains in Congress and very possibly a return to a Republican president in 2012.
In the meantime, Obama will be forced to compromise even MORE - if such a thing is possible - with "centrist" Democrats, and the Progressive "era" we all hoped and prayed for in 2008 will be over. Health care, even if it passes would be repealed or fatally ruined; climate change legislation will never pass; legislation for education, the environment, scientific research, college tuition aid, clean energy, campaign finance reform, banking reform - all of these will be nearly impossible to pass if Scott Brown is elected.
Obama, his administration and the Democratic Party will be painted - rightly so, it seems - as incompetent, out of touch and incapable of acting boldly and purposefully. Then we can all look forward to going back to the benighted age of George W. Bush, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, et al.
Well, no matter. It's so much easier to rant and rave as members of the opposition than it is to support actual governance in the real world under real-world conditions and constraints.
Just think: you will all have so much to write about for the next, oh, 10 years or so.
Congratulations, everyone! I hope you all feel very proud of your progressive "purity" now.
If you actively work to undermine a president whose agenda you support, even if you have serious disagreements with his methods of implementing it, then you end up making him look weak and ineffectual. If this is how he looks nationally, then, of course, local elections will reflect this and be harder to win. With such an obvious razor-thin margin of error in the Senate, Progressives needed to suck it up, ride this one out with gritted teeth and hope to make things better once the dust settles on HCR.
I'm sorry, but Martha Coakley's mediocre campaign notwithstanding, the possibility of her loss was created in part by a national movement by Progressives to undermine President Obama's signature piece of legislation, and, by extension, his entire agenda.
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