Reply #104: You do a lot of talking down to progressives, for someone from a state with 2 Republican senators...

[LooseWilly]

I mean... maybe with all your talk of political action, you oughtta wait until you get some better results to show before you start lecturing from astride some sort of imaginary high horse.

Or- are you saying those Republican senators are the result of all the "ORGANIZING" you claim to be so expert at? Are you maybe saying that you've been able to elect large swaths of moderates... so your moderates are inherently more "valid indicators" of where the country's politics stand?

"as a large regional nation we need to be a big tent in order to win nationally, that moderates are the swing voters..."
Seems to me that you're taking the left for granted when you call the moderates the swing voters. Like everyone else, you take for granted that the left will join the moderates wherever they happen to feel like standing, out of fear of the right. What you, of course, fail to even consider is that the left are swing voters too... in the sense that without the left the moderates can't get shit done either.

The real question is: Which faction of this coalition is MORE afraid of the Republicans?

You may think it's the left, but some of us on the left are coming to realize it is actually the moderates- who are having histrionic fits over criticisms of the "sacred swing voter status" that they are used to taking for granted, that are more afraid.

I'm with Hamsher and any who say kill the bill rather than settle for a handout to the insurance industry. Let's see if the moderates are also willing to kill the bill and carry on with the status quo... or if maybe the moderates will work to come to some sort of compromise with the left in order to not have the whole thing fail. (Hint: the public option is a compromise.)

As I see it, the left has nothing to lose. It's the moderates, like Obama, who are looking at the possibility of losing face. Or, are the moderates just too afraid to look like they are willing to compromise with the progressives of the "coalition"?