I think we’re all angry, but John Cory, writing for Reader Supported News, is specifically angry at political coverage in the media today, and the way the media’s own language and methodology for reporting the news has changed the way politics in Washington is conducted.

Cory’s essay sparks the same kind of passion and insight that made me found Not So Humble so many years ago now, and keep updating it every time there’s something worth calling out to the masses.

Because I really can’t cut him up, here’s the essay in its entirety, with urging from me to go see the original at Reader Supported News and to support their efforts to bring sanity to political news coverage on the web:

I am angry.

I’m tired of pundits and know-nothing media gasbags. I’m tired of snarky “inside politics” programming. I am sick of the bigotry and hatred of “birthers” and faux patriotic cranks and their GOP puppet masters. And I’m really pissed at the Democratic Party that confuses having a plate of limp noodles with having a spine.

I’m going to vomit if I hear the word “bipartisanship” one more time.

It was “bipartisanship” that gave us this activist conservative Supreme Court. A Supreme Court that says money is free speech and corporations are persons except when real people try to hold them accountable for their greed and poisonous ways.

“Bipartisanship” gave us the Patriot Act and FISA and illegal wiretaps and two wars and “free speech zones” and “no fly” lists. God bless bipartisan America.

I get nauseated every time the Senate explains how it takes a super majority to do anything for the American people. Tell you what Senate Bozos, if it takes 60 votes to pass legislation than it should take 60% of the popular vote to get you elected.

When some Tea Party crank says, “I want my country back,” I respond, “No madam, you want your country backward.”

When a deficit-mongering politician says, “How do we pay for this?” Why not ask, “What did you Republicans do with the surplus we Democrats left you?”

When a compassionate conservative says, “Healthcare reform is socialism,” why not answer, “No, sir it is the moral and American way to care for people.”

Yes, I can hear it now: “You are naïve and simplistic. These are complicated matters and require sophisticated solutions. Democrats are a big tent and strive for balance. But Republicans block our path at every turn. We are thinking and considering new ways to work in harmony with everyone.”

Bite me.

The only thing you get with “harmony” is a Barbershop Quartet.

Democrats stop being Republican Lite. Stop whining about that mean GOP and their nasty messaging. Grow a pair, get a message, get a bumper sticker and hang it out there. Get some strong vivid talking points.

G-O-P = Greed Over People.

Greed Kills – jobs, people and the economy.

Terrorism is Viagra for Republicans: The more fear – the more excited they get.

When a soldier dies for America, who dares ask if they were gay or straight?

Don’t act so shocked, Democratic Party. Have you looked around lately?

You’re losing the young vote that showed up to elect Obama. You’re losing those old enough to remember real Democrats. Why? Because you don’t talk to them any more than you talk to me. You talk at me. You talk around me. You talk down to me. You talk about me. You don’t talk with me. And you don’t inspire and you don’t champion and without that you are nothing more than an arbitrator of compromise and abdication.

You are facing a bully. Deal with it!

Republicans want the country backwards. They champion superstition over science because it entrenches ignorance and bigotry and captures the easily frightened.

Republicans treat the Constitution the way they treat the Bible, with selective interpretation and selective application to others while exempting themselves from judgment and accountability.

Republicans preach the gospel of fear because fear is darkness and darkness covers their theft of civil liberties and Constitutional principles.

For thirty years the Republican Party has claimed the mantel of law and order but now quake in dread of the American judicial system when putting terrorists on trial. How criminal is that?

Torture is illegal. Period. John Wayne and Jack Bauer were not our Founding Fathers – only in the make-believe world of Republican drugstore-patriots.

DADT needs to be repealed. Now. It is unconscionable, immoral, and disgusting.

Empathy, compassion and equality are not pejoratives. They are American values proven again and again throughout our history.

Republicans believe that bake-sales and cookies for chemotherapy best determine the value of life and healthcare because life is a pre-existing condition and the “free market” should not have to take on such a high risk – after all, no one gets out alive, so why should the corporation be left holding the bag? Unless of course the price is right.

Republicans believe that government should keep its hands off healthcare but should put its hands inside a woman’s body.

Republicans believe in small government – small enough to hold the “right” people and small enough to be owned and operated by the “right” people. And who are the “right” people? Them. Not you.

Democratic Party, DNC, DLCC, DSCC or whatever your acronym – I have only one question for you: Really?

You can’t win against these guys? You can’t get your message out against these guys? You can’t give America leadership against these guys?

Really?

[ I Am Angry ]
Source: Reader Supported News

Now this is the President we elected; the President that can stand up in front of a crowd and call out the opposition for what they are: obstructionist, reactionary, and in the pockets of their own special interests and a party gone mad.

The President demanded an up-or-down vote on health care; a phrase that Republicans used to use whenever they felt they couldn’t get a bill to the floor against Democratic opposition. He also trashed the same old GOP lies and talking points that we’ve seen for the past several months levvied against health care reform – all which are clearly designed not to make health care reform more palatable to Republicans and conservatives, but instead to just kill the initiative outright, completely forgetting the fact that the status quo simply isn’t acceptable.

Watching President Obama’s speech this afternoon on the way forward on health care reform, I noticed something I haven’t seen from the always-cool chief executive in a while: real passion.

It was unmistakable — this president wasn’t just making the case for reform, he was practically demanding it. Forget any rumors you may have heard about half-measures or additional compromises. President Obama is going all in.

From the outset, the president reminded his audience why the notion of reform being “rammed through” is silly. Referencing last week’s summit, Obama noted:

“This meeting capped off a debate that began with a similar summit nearly one year ago. Since then, every idea has been put on the table. Every argument has been made. Everything there is to say about health care has been said and just about everyone has said it. So now is the time to make a decision about how to finally reform health care so that it works, not just for the insurance companies, but for America’s families and businesses.”

The president noted several areas of agreement with Republicans, and presented his plan as a middle ground between the left (which wants single-payer) and the right (which wants to let insurance companies do as they please).

He also spent some time outlining exactly what his proposal is all about, including the notion that reform would give Americans “more control over their health care,” while building on the existing system. Obama presented his package in three parts: (1) ending insurance company abuses; (2) creating a marketplace for uninsured individuals and small business owners; and (3) bringing down costs. All of this would be paid for, and would bring down the deficit.

At that point, the president started knocking down GOP talking points — forcefully.

The article goes on to outline some of the GOP’s common strawman arguments and lies about health care reform – and then the President’s response to each and every one of them. If I could I would forward the article to every person who’s ever said that reform is being “rammed down our throats,” for example.

[ Fired-Up President Demands "Up or Down" Vote on Health Care ]
Source: The Washington Monthly

While it’s absolutely no surprise that the GOP would take the opportunity to be on TV to blubberingly try to talk over the President and denounce health care reform as if the alternative – millions of Americans in the US without access to health care or health insurance and thousands dying every year as a result of that fact – and while it’s no surprise that the GOP is completely out of ideas and instead would rather simply roadblock any congressional action entirely, it was a little surprising (although it shoudln’t be, I suppose) that they chose to get on national television and continue to just lie about the nature of health care reform in America, lie about how much it’ll cost, (and how it’ll actually save us money in the long run, and the amount of money required to fund it is actually a smaller figure than the amount of money we’ll spend in the same time period to keep funding health care the way we have up to this point) and lie about what the bills entail as though they’d never read any of them.

That’s the entertaining thing about the GOP – they lie and they lie, and when they’re finally called out on their lies, they backtrack and claim that they’re just the little guy being pushed around by a Democratic majority, thus rousing the hackles of their fringe Tea Party compatriots and their Ronulan allies (did you hear that their straw poll at the CPAC for the next person they should champion for the White House is Ron Paul? That’s hilarious – and I’ve explained why on at least one occasion.)

So then, we should completely have expected that they’d be out in force again, lying their faces off so badly that if the GOP were actually the pinnochio party, their collective noses would be in the way of the cameras:

The President has been charitable thus far in claiming that there are “philosophical” differences between the parties. From out here, it looks more like a visceral hatred for government on the part of Republicans rather than a real intellectual argument. That’s a divide that can’t be bridged. Because the Republicans continue to just lie, whether it’s about process (see reconciliation) or the CBO reports on the existing plan. Ezra:

Lamar Alexander and Barack Obama just had a contentious exchange on this point, so it’s worth settling the issue: Yes, the CBO found health-care reform would reduce premiums. The issue gets confused because it also found that access to subsidies would encourage people to buy more comprehensive insurance, which would mean that the value of their insurance would be higher after reform than before it. But that’s not the same as insurance becoming more expensive: The fact that I could buy a nicer car after getting a better job suggests that cars are becoming pricier. The bottom line is that if you’re comparing two plans that are exactly the same, costs go down after reform.

And the Republican plan, such as it is, and what happens to premiums under it? Jon Cohn:

So, yes, the Republican health care bill will lower premiums overall. But many people in poor health will see their premiums go up. And many people will get lower premiums only because they’re getting inferior coverage. Meanwhile, more than 50 million people will have no insurance whatsoever.

There. Can we just settle on the fact that the Republicans have absolutely no credibility, on this issue or just about any other, and be done with it? Let’s move forward with or without them.

[ GOP Lies at the Health Care Summit ]
Source: AlterNet (courtesy of The Daily Kos)

I’m with Marc Ash here – I still like President Obama, for a number of reasons, not just the ones he outlines here – personally, I think the President is doing an amazing job, especially against a disjointed Republican party that’s intent on just stopping any positive improvements he can make because they know the whole “saddle him with the problems and then blame him for all of it when he fails to fix it” isn’t going to work. He can fix it, he has the agenda, and he has the people behind him – they have to stop his activity and slow him down at all costs so they can continue to blame him for any negativity in the state of affairs.

President Obama also has to deal with a fractured Democratic party, a good portion of which is too conservative for its own good and unwilling to get in line behind some of America’s most needed priorities, like health care, jobs, and climate change. He’s got a lot of gridlock to deal with, and yet he manages to spend time pushing his agenda – and all without the help of his party, which is so busy defending itself.

Anyone who enrages Republican wing-nuts as effectively as Barack Obama can’t be all bad. In fairness, he does it without trying. In fact, just the opposite, he reaches out to them, which infuriates them all the more.

…

All of which can be argued to be “business as usual” for the American President. I guess what I like about Obama is that I get the sense that he would like to, for lack of a better word, change things. The missing link here is what kind of pressure is Obama facing behind closed doors? Even in the public realm we’re seeing unprecedented resistance to Obama’s attempts at reform, from conservative Republicans and Democrats alike.

I like the things Obama has tried to do: Health care reform, foreclosure mitigation, his comments on the outrageous decision by the Supreme Court’s five corporate lawyers to essentially duct-tape a for-sale sign to America’s electoral system. All of these things are a departure for an American President. He is indeed trying.

What concerns me are the things Obama has agreed to: An extension of the US Campaign in Afghanistan, an acceptance of the Bernanke-Geithner “Wall Street must be saved,” mantra, a don’t-ask don’t-tell policy on torture past and present.

I guess what redeems Obama for me is that he agrees to these things without losing his disdain for them. I wanted change, and in fairness change really hasn’t come yet. The intriguing thing is that Obama may actually want these changes too, and seems to. My impression is that he is meeting resistance in a number of significant forms.

Ash dives into the nature of the presidency and of how Obama may not have completely met up to the sweeping progressiveness that brought him into office (part of which I think is somewhat imagined frankly – I think a lot of progressives and liberals – myself included – made him into a super-liberal that he really never was, and never sold himself to be) but he’s pushing as hard or harder than anyone else could in this situation.

Ash also calls out a group that I’ve mentioned before too – fellow progressives.

The tea party crowd is merciless and relentless in their condemnation of Obama, but there is another group that stands just as ready to indict and convict Barack Obama: Progressives. Progressives are just as unyielding in their judgment of Obama, just as determined to derail, to thwart, to oppose, what they see as unacceptable governance. Progressive social objectives may be better reasoned and better argued, however, at the end of the day we may be seeing a Faustian synergy developing between two groups with diametrically opposed social agendas. Progressives and tea-baggers working on separate but parallel tracks to discredit the same president. Strange bedfellows indeed.

We now have a bona fide intellectual in the Oval Office – such things are rare. This is a man of understanding and insight, but his power to achieve change for good is not greater than the dedication of his supporters. Obama has to rally his supporters through a visible commitment to action, and his supporters must be willing to stand tall beside him.

[ I Still Like Obama ]
Source: Reader Supported News

Take a good long look at that graph up there. The numbers are indisputable too – the kind of turnaround that President Obama has managed to cause in such a short period of time – and with the help of The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (also known as the Stimulus Plan) is remarkable.

The White House also released a handy video to help people get up to speed with the effects of the plan and how much it’s probably helped them without them even knowing it:

The brilliant thing behind the chart and the video is that it shows that the White House is trying to get back in the saddle about shaping and controlling their message.

Almost just as importantly, this kind of message control is good for calling out Republican congresscritters for bashing the White House on the stimulus plan and then greedily sucking up money for their districts and happily spending it — all while lambasting the President and the government for so-called “wasteful spending;” — all while their home districts are profiting off of the hard work and political will of the President and Congressional Democrats. The truth-telling is becoming so loud that even one very prominent Republican is calling out his own party on their hypocrisy.

[ The Road to Recovery ]

Here we are, right back where we started from oh so many years ago – Republicans stand in the pulpit complaining that every dollar that Democrats want to spend is somehow wasted, that somehow Republicans would never spend money when in office (even though recent history – and deficits – prove otherwise) and that somehow putting Americans back to work, providing access to health care for everyone, and cleaning up our air and water are all wasted when compared to the incessant need for bombs and guns – which to be clear, is all the Republicans really spent money on when in office, aside from their own interests, friends, and failed programs.

Paul Krugman, in an op-ed for the New York Times, quite accurately takes on the problem of deficit fear-mongering, which has always been one of the Republican party’s staple tactics. Lately the right-wing has been drumming up the media with “doom and gloom” scenarios of massive deficits and budget gaps, which they conveniently blame on the President’s domestic priorities and not at all on the massive escalation of overseas conflicts caused by the previous Republican administration and its majority in Congress.

Even so, Krugman points out that this fear-mongering is ultimately pointless and is designed to make more of a political point than it does an economic point:

These days it’s hard to pick up a newspaper or turn on a news program without encountering stern warnings about the federal budget deficit. The deficit threatens economic recovery, we’re told; it puts American economic stability at risk; it will undermine our influence in the world. These claims generally aren’t stated as opinions, as views held by some analysts but disputed by others. Instead, they’re reported as if they were facts, plain and simple.

Yet they aren’t facts. Many economists take a much calmer view of budget deficits than anything you’ll see on TV. Nor do investors seem unduly concerned: U.S. government bonds continue to find ready buyers, even at historically low interest rates. The long-run budget outlook is problematic, but short-term deficits aren’t — and even the long-term outlook is much less frightening than the public is being led to believe.

…

Let’s talk for a moment about budget reality. Contrary to what you often hear, the large deficit the federal government is running right now isn’t the result of runaway spending growth. Instead, well more than half of the deficit was caused by the ongoing economic crisis, which has led to a plunge in tax receipts, required federal bailouts of financial institutions, and been met — appropriately — with temporary measures to stimulate growth and support employment.

The point is that running big deficits in the face of the worst economic slump since the 1930s is actually the right thing to do. If anything, deficits should be bigger than they are because the government should be doing more than it is to create jobs.

True, there is a longer-term budget problem. Even a full economic recovery wouldn’t balance the budget, and it probably wouldn’t even reduce the deficit to a permanently sustainable level. So once the economic crisis is past, the U.S. government will have to increase its revenue and control its costs. And in the long run there’s no way to make the budget math work unless something is done about health care costs.

But there’s no reason to panic about budget prospects for the next few years, or even for the next decade. Consider, for example, what the latest budget proposal from the Obama administration says about interest payments on federal debt; according to the projections, a decade from now they’ll have risen to 3.5 percent of G.D.P. How scary is that? It’s about the same as interest costs under the first President Bush.

Why, then, all the hysteria? The answer is politics.

Heaven forbid the conservatives running around like chickens with their heads cut off acknowledge that we’re in the same position as -or better than- we were under one of their own. Instead they’d rather storm the airwaves with stories of excessive government spending, even though that government spending is what’s keeping the economic engine of the country running right now.

[ Fiscal Scare Tactics ]
Source: The New York Times

I’m definitely one of the people who watched the Q-and-A at the House Republican retreat with the President and yearned for that Obama to be the one who governs from the White House. We caught a glimpse of him again during the State of the Union, and we saw him out in full force when he was striking down talking-point-driven Republicans who asked questions that were devoid of substance and designed only to provoke a response – he handled them with class, poise, and dignity, and laid the smackdown when he had to. I was more than impressed.

Shortly thereafter, Republicans were in a tizzy, trying to come up with more talking points to back up the ones that the President had just shot down on national television like so much skeet at an NRA convention, trying to hilariously claim themselves victorious for even asking the questions in the first place. When cornered, they admitted they shouldn’t have let the Q-and-A be broadcast, because the President said he would be candid, direct, and pointed, and he was: shining the light on the cockroaches of the Republican party and their political degeneracy and watching them scurry away from the light was one of the best things I’ve ever seen….and a long time coming.

RUSSERT: Tom Cole — former head of the NRCC, congressman from Oklahoma — said, “He scored many points. He did really well.” Barack Obama, for an hour and a half, was able to refute every single Republican talking point used against him on the major issues of the day. In essence, it was almost like a debate where he was front and center for the majority of it. … One Republican said to me, off the record, behind closed doors: “It was a mistake that we allowed the cameras to roll like that. We should not have done that.”

Additionally from ThinkProgress:

Accepting the invitation to speak at the House GOP retreat may turn out to be the smartest decision the White House has made in months,” writes the Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder. “Debating a law professor is kind of foolish — the Republican House Caucus has managed to turn Obama’s weakness — his penchant for nuance — into a strength. Plenty of Republicans asked good and probing questions, but Mike Pence, among others, found their arguments simply demolished by the president.”

Owned.

[ Republicans Dismayed by Obama’s Strong Performance, Say it was a ‘Mistake’ to Let Cameras Roll. ]
Source: ThinkProgress

Why is it that when the Republicans want to take someone on, they can never manage to do it cleanly and in front of the American people over the issues they care about, and instead resort to things like breaking in to someone’s office or dressing up like a pimp to try and deceive someone gullible enough to believe they’re honest? I mean really.

No, seriously – the guy who dressed up like a pimp and went around from ACORN office to ACORN office in an attempt to get someone gullible or silly enough to take them seriously enough to offer them tax advice that naturally would be illegal because of their illegal profession, and then subsequently somehow managed to light a firestorm over it (for some reason this is like a late night infomercial salesman managing to find someone stupid enough to fall for their prank and then everyone gets up in arms about the person who fell for it and not the prank) got himself busted trying to play secret agent and breaking into Loiusiana Senator Mary Landrieu’s office.

James O’Keefe, the snot-nosed thug in question (who likely wouldn’t last an hour in jail if it weren’t for his well heeled and well-connected friends/parents who likely bailed him out immediately) and a couple of his buddies trying to pose as telephone repairmen – without proper ID or clearance of course – apparently tried to break into the office and tap Senator Landrieu’s phone. For what? Who knows, but, as the media is missing, that’s not the important question. The important question here is why the conservative right is acting like this, and why they’re fostering this kind of scorched earth “ends justify the means” politicking by breaking the law – instead of simply coming to the table?

You can do inflammatory documentaries without circus acts and scare tactics and pseudo-secret agent antics. The trick is to use this little thing called evidence and investigation: two things O’Keefe has clearly never heard of.

[ ACORN Smear Journalist Arrested for Alleged Attempt to Bug Sen. Mary Landrieu’s Office ]
Source: AlterNet

[ Fake ACORN Pimp Arrested in Attempt to Bug Senate Office ]
Source: NewsWeek

The most hilarious thing about the “alternatives” that the Republicans have tried to put on the table to health care reform is that they’re all exactly what they complain the President always does: talk but provide no direction. The Republicans claim their option will “eliminate frivilous lawsuits against hospitals and doctors,” which essentially amounts to torte reform – the kind that has been proven time and time again to benefit insurance companies by making patients less able to file claims for ineffective or inappropriate or harmful care and treatment.

The majority of Americans has never supported torte reform, and they won’t even if they change the language – it essentially puts more power in the hands of insurance companies and less in the hands of patients and doctors who are actually responsible, and it just goes to further the fear that Americans have – and are dying from – of going to the doctor for medical treatment, even when something is clearly wrong.

I’m getting too deeply into a discussion of torte reform, but this is true all around whenever the Republicans try to dabble in health care. Their last attempt was so horrific they tried to play it off like it was just a first and rough draft and no one should have seen it, even though they were the ones who released it.

But this one is just as bad. The goal here, as usual, is “self empowerment,” which is really code for “you’re on your own, no one cares about your health care, we just want to not spend money on you so we can cut costs arbitrarily to spend money on things like bombs and missles.”

Hidden in the cobwebby depths of the House Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor and Pensions lies the conservative answer to health care. It’s a plan that would cost about $940 billion less than the House Democrats’ bill, and cut deficit spending by tens of billions over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office – all while keeping large employers and insurance moguls happy as clams on subsidized Prozac.

The downside? It would leave more than 52 million nonelderly Americans uninsured. That’s an improvement of roughly zero percent.

The legislation, ambitiously dubbed “The Empowering Patients First Act,” was introduced by Rep. Tom Price, chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee, in July. It has lately been resurrected as the paragon of reform done right by right-wing columnists, as well as conservative bastions such as the Heritage Foundation and the Christian Coalition.

The Empowering Patients bill would grant tax credits to people purchasing insurance – not much use to unemployed and low-income Americans. It would allow health insurance companies to sell policies across state lines, knocking off state oversight of insurers.

The legislation would not require that employers offer coverage, nor would it impose regulations preventing insurance companies from cherry picking healthy clients.

It would require that no federal funds be used to pay for abortions unless “the pregnancy endangers a women’s life or was the result of forcible rape.”

And, to help fund the minimal expense of the bill, it would instate “medical liability reforms” that would force down the cost of compensation for malpractice lawsuits and make it harder for patients to sue for injuries incurred during treatment.

Feeling empowered yet?

Awesome – so a bill that…does nothing but slash costs and benefits and leaves millions of Americans to fend for themselves, whether they’re sick, needy, elderly, or none of those things.

That’s the conservative way: I’ve got mine, you can go to hell.

[ The Republican Health "Alternative": Empowering Ourselves to Death ]
Source: TruthOut

Joshua Holland, writing for AlterNet, strikes gold again with another dissection of how the right-wing has gone from devouring itself to devouring everyone around it. Back in early 2008 and 2009 we were collectively appalled at the way the right-wing was destroying itself, and the battle that was raging within – the fiscal conservatives and the social conservatives and the wingnuts on the fringe, and how they were all competing for control over the direction of the party. Well guess who won: the wing-nuts on the fringe – mostly by allying themselves with the social conservatives. Fiscal conservatives, who allow themselves to be blinded by any mention of “smaller government,” follow right along in the scorched-earth policies of the far-right, and help get them elected.

But that battle is over – it’s clear that the wingnuts and the teabaggers are in control of the GOP, and they won’t stop until they’re back on top and ready to shove another mouthful of neocon-style political soup right down our throats along with the water they’ll board us with. Now it’s time to turn our attention to the Democrats who are letting this happen, and get them back in line, and that’s what Holland does.

I always say that generalized griping about “the Democrats” is a waste of time. It seems to me that there are around 10 Democratic senators and maybe 50 members of the House who are far to the right of “moderate” by any stretch of the imagination. They are conservatives, and they’ve obstructed their own party’s moderately progressive proposals — the very same proposals they ran and won on — at every turn, right from the beginning.

Let me be clear before continuing: there’s buckets of blame to go around, and it would be oversimplifying to suggest that it’s all on the conservadems. But I think they deserve the most responsibility for the Democrats’ inability to pass the key pieces of “change” they promised.

Holland is doing the right thing here – it’s one thing to whine and complain about “Democrats” and claim they’re “just like the other folks,” and so on – that’s too easy, and doesn’t address the real obstacles to change. Holland calls them out by name:

The Nelson Twins, Evan Bayh, Mark Pryor, Mary Landrieu, Kent Conrad, Claire McCaskill, Jim Webb and Blanche Lincoln in the Senate, and all but 4 or 5 of the Blue Dogs in the House have been horror shows, and the entire party has had to appease them by watering down its proposals at every turn, demoralizing the Democratic base in the process and leading of course to Scott Brown and the possible — perhaps probable — end of the road for health-care reform.

Max Baucus dragged out the process for months in his committee while entertaining all kinds of Republican amendments and flirting with pathetic futility with Olympia Snowe’s vote. Reps like Joe Baca and Jim Marshall held pressers to spew forth Fox News-worthy talking points against “socialized medicine.” Joe Lieberman not only went on Fox news to oppose anything even vaguely progressive, he also repeatedly, almost comically pulled the ball out from under Harry Reid’s foot every time Reid thought he was going to finally kick that field-goal.

And they are wholly responsible for the Dems’ almost unbelievable inability to overn with huge majorities in both chambers of Congress — they are why real Democrats (actual moderates included) remain in the minority. Do the math — 59 minus 10 equals 49, a Senate minority.

Their opposition would be wise to start raising money now – there’s no way these folks will get re-elected. The real hope for America rests with populist, progressive candidates who can intelligently sell their message to the American people, without waffling over whether they’re conservative enough to keep their jobs or progressive enough to keep their titles.

[ Conservatives Made the GOP Toxic and Now They're Killing the Democratic Party ]
Source: AlterNet