Not Shutting Up, Not Going Away

OK: Everybody who thought, even way back on Election Night, that Barack Obama was a "starry-eyed idealist," stand on your head.

That's what I thought.

So let's stop with the everybody-who-doesn't-think-the-shitty-Senate-health-care-bill-is-better-than-Social-Security-and-Medicre-put-together-is-an-idiot criticism.

No, this is not a defense of Jane Hamsher's insane alliance with Grover Fucking Norquist.

It's a demand that the Obama apologists hysterically claiming that a trillion-dollar giveaway to Big Medicine is the Democratic Achievement of the Century stop insulting those of us who would like to point out how many thousands of people will continue to die after going bankrupt trying to pay for mandated insurance that is too expensive and doesn't cover anything.

We're not pissed because Obama broke our delicate wittle hearts. We're pissed because we started way back before Inauguration warning the President, Democratic members of Congress and everybody else that if they didn't start negotiating with the strongest, furthest-left position they could imagine - Single-Payer - the Blue Dogs and repugs would negotiate them down to nothing.

And hey, lookie here: That's exactly what happened.

Now that it's obvious that we were right and they were wrong, guess who's getting ridiculed and ignored and marginalized? Yep, the ones who have been right all along.

But only the ones who were wrong are allowed to comment on health care DEform. Only the repug collaborationists and corporate tools who made sure the bill is a windfall for everybody except the people who actually need health care coverage have the credibility to tell us how wonderful it is and how we should shut the fuck up and go away.

Serve all of them right if we did. If all of us Fighting Liberals who knew a year and a half ago that getting real reform out of centrist, cautious Barack Obama was going to be trench warfare one muddy step at a time just left the DINOs to their fate.

But as told-you-so satisfying as it would be to see Harry Reid lose the Senate next year, as he richly deserves, there's work to do. And as usual, it's we liberals who are going to have to do it.

So we're going to keep demanding Congress repair the gaping holes in the health care reform bill, and we're going to keep promoting primary challengers to Blue Dogs and DINOs, and we're going to keep calling out Barack Obama every time he fails to meet a crisis with the appropriate liberal solution.

Not because he ever promised he would, but because he made it crystal clear he would not, and that makes it our job to force him to do it anyway.

Cross-posted at They Gave Us A Republic ....