Reply #30: My only point

[PATRICK]

is that Kucinich did not have the agonizing power to kill the bill nor did he work with complete tactical options to do anything more than get deal to get the better options on the table. We still have another vote on the reconciled package to go. The Senate is a whole other story and progressives there will not kill a bill either. It is the blue dogs who have said and done the outrageous things, anything at all to spoil this. The price of not employing all means to advance the best reform is that the caucus hardly has the clout or the ability to have even their ideas taken seriously. Only a no vote can do that. The no vote does not hurt the bill, Obama or reform, but it certainly incurs the wrath of people who should know that a Congress minus principled Progressives is a threat to everything.

The presumption that is clung to is that reform has begun and can advance. That is not a sure thing, nor is undoing the miserably false representation we have that makes progress uncertain and murderously , stupidly slow. If no political capital comes from the bill it is because all the good things people need and expect might not even be visible in limited fashion for years. \

Nor is this yet THE bill. I might be wrong in assuming it will be further degraded and threatened by the Senate?