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We felt a sense of dread last November when Glenn Beck announced his "100-year plan" for America:

Beck then describes "The Plan," which he says is analogical to "lifeboats" on the Titanic: He says he's assembling a team of "experts" to help him shape a movement that will produce GlennBeckian electoral victories in 2010. (Obviously, that NY-23 experiment didn't turn out so hot.) These experts are being hired to work on policy areas such as the economy, the environment, national security, etc.

Beck: And what I've done, is I've found two really smart people in each category, two really -- oh, they just have all kinds of experience. And then I have coupled them with one rebel -- one radical. I hear that's popular to be a radical now.

But these radicals are not the radicals wearing the Che T-shirts. These radicals are the ones wearing the Jefferson T-shirts!

Beck had already displayed a propensity to traduce history in order to push his thesis that the progressive movement is the Enemy of America, which recently reached full flower in his pseudo-documentary based on Jonah Goldberg's pseudo-history portraying progressives as the font of all the great genocides of the past century.

Will Bunch reports that this fondness for fake history is about to extend to church-state separation issues -- and will tread into territory long hold by far-right extremists.

Bunch reports that Beck has released the first concrete details about Beck's "experts" for "The Plan":

It is an eight hour event. You and I on stage with three different experts. David Barton is going to be the first one and we're going to talk about the meaning of faith in America. All the lies that you have been told, that this isn't a nation of faith, that religion played no role. I'm you will be stunned when you learn and see the real history that is no longer taught.

As Bunch notes:

The real reason that history "is no longer taught" is because...it's bogus.

As Will explains:

Barton is the founder of a Texas-based group called the WallBuilders, a foundation devoted to proving that the roots of the United States and its Constitution are not based on the separation of church of state -- as is widely believed and widely taught -- but as country built upon a bedrock of Christianity. That is also the premise of a widely circulated book that Barton published in the 1990s called "The Myth of Separation" -- a book that was eventually re-written and issued under a different name because it was larded with bad information, some of which nevertheless became gospel on conservative talk radio. As noted in the 2006 Texas Monthly article (via Nexis):

In 1995 the historian Robert Alley attempted to trace the provenance of a quote that Rush Limbaugh had mistakenly attributed to James Madison, in which Madison purportedly called the Ten Commandments the foundation of American civilization. All roads led to David Barton, whose The Myth of Separation attributed the following quote to Madison: "We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future of all of our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self government; upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God." Barton cited two sources for the quote: a 1939 book by Harold K. Lane called Liberty! Cry Liberty! and Frederick Nyneyer's 1958 book First Principles in Morality and Economics: Neighborly Love and Ricardo's Law of Association. Alley couldn't find the quote anywhere in Nyneyer's book, however, and eventually concluded that Barton had pulled it from an article in a journal with the unlikely title Progressive Calvinism, which, in turn, had attributed it to something called the "1958 calendar of Spiritual Mobilization." In any case, Alley reported, the editors of Madison's papers were unable to find anything in his writings that was even remotely similar. "In addition," they added, "the idea is inconsistent with everything we know about Madison's views on religion and government, which he expressed time and time again in public and in private."

Barton previously appeared on Fox News' show hosted by Mike Huckabee, to promote the same nonsense. And as we noted then:

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Glenn Beck yesterday had on both of the Republican candidates in the California Senate primary, the winner of which race will be facing Barbara Boxer. And both Chuck DeVore and Carly Fiorina worked hard to curry Beck's favor, though it isn't hard to figure out which one won, judging by Beck's headline: "Is Chuck DeVore the next Scott Brown?"

Both interviews were essentially explorations by the candidates of Glenn Beck's favorite theme, to wit, progressives are the root of all evil in American life. This was especially the case in the interview with DeVore, who actively stoked Beck's fetish about Woodrow Wilson:

DEVORE: Well, Woodrow Wilson and people like Frank Goodnow, about 130 years ago, saw the Constitution as a roadblock to their plans for perfecting government and for basically ushering in a paradise on earth. And instead of what was set up by Madison to be a separation of powers, with the legislative, the executive and the judicial, because the Founders understood that people like power. And that you'll end up with tyranny in your country if you can't separate the powers.

...

BECK: I think the system is full of — it's riddled with a disease called progressive. If you've got cancer, no doctor says, yes start using filter tips cigarettes. They say no more cigarettes.

DEVORE: Right.

BECK: Progressives and the progressive idea are the cigarettes. So you tell me how to fix it.

Ah, nothing like a little eliminationism in the afternoon, is there?

Predictably, DeVore also revealed himself as one of those Patriot "tenthers" frequently promoted by Beck -- right-wing extremists who believe the Tenth Amendment gives states the ability to nullify federal law:

DEVORE: Well, first of all, we have to follow the Constitution. That's the very first thing that any lawmaker does when they get sworn in.

(CROSSTALK)

BECK: This audience won't, but most people say well, where aren't we following the Constitution?

DEVORE: Well, where do we start?

I think a good obvious place is Tenth Amendment. As a state lawmaker, I find my powers as a state lawmaker being short-circuited at the federal level.

As we've explained, these theories originated in the 1990s with the militia/Patriot movement.

Fiorina, in contrast, was perfectly corporate even as she tried to assure Beck that she really was a populist:

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Mostly she did this by joining Beck in the progressive-bashing:

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President Obama ignored warnings not to appear at the National Prayer Breakfast today, since it was organized by fundamentalist religionists whose animus towards not just him but all progressives has been all too obvious for years. But he did anyway -- and, as Sam Stein at HuffPo reports, actually managed to deliver an important message about the critical role of civility in a democratic society.

The main point was that right-wing nutcases, and their frothing about Obama's supposed foreignness and radicalism and hatred of Christianity, make it impossible to even have a rational discussion:

Obama: Civility also requires relearning how to disagree without being disagreeable -- understanding, as President [Kennedy] said, 'Civility is not a sign of weakness.' Now I am the first to confess I am not always right. Michelle will testify to that. But surely, you can question my policies without questioning my faith. Or for that matter, my citizenship.

No doubt, the talkers at Fox will take this as evidence that he hates the "jes' folks" who populate the Tea Parties.

Driftglass: SOTU review.

TBogg: Another Project War for the New American Century.

The Hunting of the Snark: Dishonesty in action is just another day's work for Megan McArdle.

Bic's Place: Cautious optimism for gays in the military.

Rawrahs: A good time to revisit Gilliard's fighting liberal.

RIP Howard Zinn and J. D. Salinger.

Guest post by Batocchio. Temporarily e-mail tips to batocchio9 AT yahoo DOT com.

Everybody has a little birdy that is giving them tips about what's happening to HCR. I have mine too, and while I'm not optimistic, I've heard some of the same things that Ryan Grim writes:

House progressives organizing to rescue health care reform are pressuring their Senate counterparts to go back to the provision that has most energized the party and a majority of Americans throughout the debate: The public option.

The effort was discussed during a closed-door meeting on Tuesday night, with a faction arguing that the best way to salvage reform is to persuade the Senate to pass the public health insurance option using the budget reconciliation process that needs only a majority vote.

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That leaves progressives as the bloc available to pick up. Their demands -- changes related to the tax on insurance, a Medicaid or Medicare expansion, and a public option -- would likely be allowable using reconciliation. (The Senate parliamentarian would have the final say.)

Two House freshmen, Reps. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) and Jared Polis (D-Colo.), circulated a letter, looking for signatures, that will be delivered to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Thursday on behalf of the plan, Polis told HuffPost.

Reid is not generally receptive to advice from the lower chamber, but health care reform has stumbled into territory where there is no map.

If Reid and President Obama decide that the House Democrats have a workable plan -- perhaps the only viable plan left, after the New York Times declared that the brakes had been slammed -- they may be able to accomplish it.

A big problem is that the House doesn't trust the Senate to actually do everything they say they might, so they want the Senate to handle their part first before the House votes. And after what we've seen from the Senate, would you trust Lieberman, Bayh, Nelson or the rest of them either?

Digby caught this bit by Ben Nelson where he said he always planned on filibustering HCR anyway.

Nancy Pelosi held a presser today and Greg Sargent caught this:

There’ve been some rumblings among House Dems that Obama’s speech last night, despite its urgent appeal for passage of health reform, didn’t chart out a specific enough road map for Congress to break its logjam on the issue.

But at a presser just now, Nancy Pelosi strongly articulated the opposite argument: That the President’s appeal would be “helpful” to Congress in their efforts to get reform done.

Best of all, a striking quote from Pelosi underscoring her determination to get health care done:

“You go through the gate. If the gate’s closed, you go over the fence. If the fence is too high, we’ll pole-vault in. If that doesn’t work, we’ll parachute in. But we’re going to get health care reform passed for the American people.”

It’s often been observed that this health care fight is the defining moment of Pelosi’s career, and that victory would seal her place as one of the most powerful House Speakers in modern history. She seems to realize this, too

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Glenn Beck didn't bother to even have any guests on his program yesterday because he was too busy calling progressives "parasites" and "a virus" and making insane connections that only he understands. That's typical eliminationist rhetoric.

He can't handle differences of political belief, so he wants to wipe out liberals and progressives from the face of the earth. He believes that since he uses a blackboard with chalk and incoherently erases a letter off of one word to form new words that will make it all comprehensible.

Beck's been working himself up into a frothy, psycho-frenzied lather about destroying all progressives as he promotes Jonah Goldberg's dishonest book and thesis about fascism, which he uses for his own demented documentary. And apparently I should be eliminated too.

Wow, all because I was not happy with Lynne Woolsey for hosting a fundraiser for CA-36's very own Blue Dog, Jane Harman, and wrote a few posts about it calling for her to stop.

Beck: The traditional democratic party is going up against the radical fringe left.
I've been telling you that there's a difference between democrats and progressives from the beginning now but nobody wants to listen. Here it is. Their are Blue Dog democrats and but they are not socialists, Marxists radicals. They are more like your grand father's democrat. Most Democrats still love America, they love the founders and they love the constitution and believe in this country. But then there's another group and they have infiltrated not just the Democratic party, but the republican party...

Speak softly and carry a big stick. blah, blah, blah...We got this from an insider. Wait until you hear this story. The co-chair of the CPC...

How many times have I said they are like a virus feeding on the host of republic.

The progressives are parasites inside the democrat....The California progressives weren't the only ones upset. John Amato of Crooksandliars wrote on Huffington Post.

"for Woolsey to holding a fundraising events for a known Blue Dog should be a firing offense for the CPC."

Progressives Democrats for America joined in, They started an online petition asking her to withdraw from the event. Woolsey said no. I don't know how this story ends quite frankly it's California and it's all going to end in a mudslide right into the bottom of the ocean eventually anyway, but let me tell you something. The last time the progressives were in this position and they started gobbling power and they exposed themselves people caught on and hated them.

That threatens him, so he warns that people like me are destroying the Democratic Party. Of course, you know he loves the Democratic Party as much as he loves eating sandpaper. He opines that progressives have been hiding for years and years in the wilderness and suddenly snuck up on him.

He's the Teabagger King and is trying to purge all moderate Republicans from the GOP, as if they were a disease, and replace them with arch-conservative haters. And while he's at it, he wants to do the same for Democrats.

Of course, Glenn has nothing but our own best interests at heart. Riiiiiiiight.

UPDATE: After watching this again and adding a little transcript, isn't it nice for Beck to hope that California gets hit with an earthquake that destroys the state and we end up as fish food. What a guy, that Beck. He not only is hoping for progressives to be eliminated, but the entire state of California as well.

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Is there a bigger fool than Lanny Davis? When will this DLC Democrat stop saying on Fox News that he's a liberal, pack his bags and move on already? He's typical of the kind of Democrat who has no backbone and would rather cry to O'Reilly about health care than to continue to fight for it.

Davis: This is a No Spin Zone fact that we lost in Massachusetts's because we lost the debate on health care...blah, blah, blah...

My God, he has no self respect. He uses BillO's own terminology to validate Bill and his own opinions. You know Lanny, it is personal with pols like yourself. You're more interested in being a pundit with face time than anything else. MA's loss doesn't mean America is against health-care reform. The new DFA poll in MA said they were mad that there was no public option and that it didn't go far enough.

We had Research 2000 poll voters immediately after the Election ended: Even Scott Brown voters want Democrats to be bolder and they want healthcare reform that includes a public option.

You read that right. By a margin of three-to-two, former Obama voters who voted for Republican Scott Brown yesterday said the Senate healthcare bill "doesn't go far enough." Six-to-one Obama voters who stayed home agreed. And to top it off, 80% of all voters still want the choice of a public option in the bill.

Lanny, why don't you use your face time and blast your BFF Joe Lieberman, who helped destroy the Senate health care bill -- which is the bill that America hates -- instead of whining about the pure-hard-left. People like yourself will always keep progressives from victories.

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Glenn Beck has a special "documentary" he's going to show his audience today on Fox News titled "Live Free Or Die," and what's evident is that the entire show is going to be predicated on expanding on Jonah Goldberg's fraudulent thesis in his bestselling book, Liberal Fascism, namely, that fascism is "properly understood" as "a phenomenon of the left."

What's apparent is that Beck intends to leap from this fraudulent beginning to the bizarre conclusion that the progressive movement has always produced genocide -- mostly by equating fascists with communists with progressives, which is part of the underlying illogic of Goldberg's thesis. It seems he will be promoting the conclusion that President Obama is leading America on a path to genocide as well.

Indeed, anyone who's been watching Beck's show the past year is aware that his continually building thesis about Obama -- that he is secretly a black radical Marxist/fascist/socialist/whateverist intent on creating a totalitarian regime in America -- is largely built on Liberal Fascism and its thesis. Beck has
had Goldberg on numerous times to promote the fraud. And his long-running attacks on the progressive movement as the "cancer" destroying the country -- which has been the entire point of Beck's show this week, including the conclusion that progressives may try to assassinate Obama if he moves to the center -- have been nakedly drawn straight from Goldberg's Planet Bizarro version of history. (The giveaway has been Beck's running insistence that Woodrow Wilson is at the root of this evil.)

Towards the end of yesterday's segment, Beck fretted that "the academic wing" of the progressive movement was going to attack him viciously for his "documentary." Goldberg notes that he's faced the same for his book -- though in reality, academics have been largely silent on the subject of Liberal Fascism.

That, however, is about to end.

I've already explained in some depth exactly why Goldberg's thesis is so profoundly dishonest, especially when it comes to the mountain of historical facts that contradict his claims, which he simply elides. But I'm not an academic -- just a journalist who has real-life experience writing about real American fascists.

Academic historians, in fact, have tended to shy away from tackling Goldberg's book, precisely because it is such an obvious work of propagandistic polemics, and his methodology so shabby, that they haven't considered the work (such as it is) contained therein to be worthy of academic consideration.

But because Goldberg's fraudulent thesis has now become conventional wisdom on the American Right -- and particularly among the Tea Party set, where signs equating liberals to fascists and Obama to Hitler have become commonplace -- many historians, especially those who have specialized in the serious study of fascism, have come to the realization that calling out Goldberg for his fraud is long overdue.

To that end, I began organizing last fall a series of essays from academic historians and political scientists critiquing Liberal Fascism. The essays are now ready, and this Monday, Jan. 25, they will be presented at History News Network.

In addition to my introductory essay, there will be essays by four widely acknowledged experts on fascism:

-- Robert O. Paxton, professor emeritus at Columbia University and the author of The Anatomy of Fascism.

-- Roger Griffin, professor of political science at Oxford Brookes and the author of The Nature of Fascism.

-- Matthew Feldman, professor of history at University of Northampton, and a co-editor of several academic texts on fascism.

-- Chip Berlet, senior researcher at Political Research Associates and the co-author (with Matthew Lyons) of Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort.

Beck will probably believe this response from academics is inspired by his show today, but only in a purely accidental sense: It's been in the works for some months now, and was more inspired by the broad absorption of Goldberg's thesis as conventional wisdom -- of which Beck's constant promotion of it is a not-insignificant part. Let's just say the timing will indeed be serendipitous.

Incidentally, Beck gave us a little preview of the "documentary" on his Tuesday show:

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OK, OK, Glenn, we get it. The progressive movement is the root of all evil in America and must be purged by any means necessary to save the Republic. Really, we get that. You've been saying it for a long time now. And you've been repeating it a lot lately.

And yesterday's show was really just a continuation. We learned that the "coming civil war" for "the soul of the Democratic Party" will be fought as "progressives vs. Democrats -- it's blue vs. gray."

We also learned that when progressives lose, "all bets are off. They will cheat, they will lie, they will steal -- and they have in the past blown things up if it helps them win."

But really, do you think that progressives will try to assassinate Obama if he decides to move to the political center in the coming months?

Because that sure as hell was what you were getting at yesterday on your show. You fretted in the opening monologue, talking about that looming internal "civil war" among Democrats:

Beck: I believe it could get ugly -- so ugly, not only do I think the Republic is in danger, I think that we need to pay real attention -- I think this president could be in real danger as well -- something I have said for awhile.

However, he never fully explained what he meant by this remark -- mostly dropping further intimations, including the remark about progressives' supposedly violent tendencies, and then explaining "why the president is in danger" by running through one of his chalkboard talks showing Obama's connections to such nefarious progressive entities as SEIU and ACORN. Later, he added that these "radical revolutionaries" running the White House were planning to "deal a final death blow to the Constitution if they can."

Beck may have been a little oblique about this on his Fox News show, but earlier yesterday on his radio show he explained his thinking in more detail (via Media Matters):

Beck: The most dangerous time in any regime, especially a radicalized regime, is when it is in collapse.

Watch the uber-Left. Pray that Obama moves to the center. If he does, pray that the Secret Service care for that man. That that man is never left alone. He has invited 9-11 Truthers into the White House and into his administration! If they believe that he's 'just another one of these guys,' he is in danger.

Actually, Glenn, a far more likely scenario under which President Obama would be endangered were if he were to move away from the failed center where he's been operating and tack left, especially in a populist sense, by tackling issues like banking reform and immigration.

Because then we can be certain the dogs of the TeaPartying GlennBeckian Right will not merely be howling at full bay, as they have for the past year, but literally frothing at the mouth. Then, I would have even more concern for his well-being than I do now -- which is plenty.

There are a lot of ideas floating around about what to do with health care. President Obama's remarks aren't helping either.
There's an article in the NY Daily News that says this:

Democratic insiders say they are weighing several options to save health care reform, and one actually may be bold enough to revive a depressed, turned-off Democratic base: use the obscure reconciliation loophole to pass a public option.

“Let’s do a public option, or let’s go back and do a single-payer plan,” a frustrated senior Democrat told the Mouth. “You can have people say, ‘Look, if we’re going to do reconciliation, let’s get more, not get less.’”

“If you’re going to use reconciliation, then use it hard,” the Democrat said, adding that it’s a serious option.

We look at some of the other ideas in the paper today, but that’s the one progressives want.

For instance, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee immediately began sending around a petition last night advising Democrats not to take the wrong lesson from Massachusetts, and to use reconciliation.

“The loss of Ted Kennedy’s seat — due to a lack of enthusiasm among Democrats and Independents — sends a clear message to Congress. The Senate health care bill is not the change we were promised in 2008, and it must be improved. The Senate must use ‘reconciliation’ to pass a better bill with a strong public option.”

PCCC’s Adam Green said it got 10,000 signatures in the first hour.

I was talking to Howie Klein last night and we agreed. What about expanding Medicare and medicaid?

Ezra has the same thoughts:

There is another option.

Democrats could scrap the legislation and start over in the reconciliation process. But not to re-create the whole bill. If you go that route, you admit the whole thing seemed too opaque and complex and compromised. You also admit the limitations of the reconciliation process. So you make it real simple: Medicare buy-in between 50 and 65. Medicaid expands up to 200 percent of poverty with the federal government funding the whole of the expansion. Revenue comes from a surtax on the wealthy.

And that's it. No cost controls. No delivery-system reforms. Nothing that makes the bill long or complex or unfamiliar. Medicare buy-in had more than 51 votes as recently as a month ago. The Medicaid change is simply a larger version of what's already passed both chambers. This bill would be shorter than a Danielle Steel novel. It could take effect before the 2012 election. If health-care reform that preserves the private market is too complex and requires too many dirty deals with the existing industries, then cut both out. But get it done. Democrats have a couple of different options for passing health-care reform this year. But not passing health-care reform should not be seen as one of them.

So the Democrats lost one seat. Big deal. They had 58 seats for a long time anyway. Just don't panic and move forward and be decisive.
The Villagers don't understand that Americans want a progressive health care bill. here's some evidence.

Digby caught a weird exchange between Tweety and Howard Dean.

Somehow, I don't think Matthews or any other villager was convinced by Dean's argument. They just don't think that way. Therefore, electing a Republican will never result in the political establishment and the media understanding that it was because the Democrat wasn't liberal enough. Best not to get too fine with this stuff and just send them a message they can understand.

Yesterday Labor leaders sent Harry Reid for a National Exchange in health-care reform and Reid says they will move HCR forward

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Glenn Beck was in top form yesterday, anticipating Scott Brown's win in Massachusetts by launching into yet another tirade about the Monstrous Evil Known As Progressivism. This one was flat-out eliminationist, describing progressives variously as objects fit only for extermination, including diseases and monsters:

Beck: Progressives were lurking like a virus, waiting for their chance to suck all of the blood out of the Democratic neck. They were looking for the opening to infect the system. And once they were inside that system, I warned in 2004, the Democrats -- it will be a battle to the end of your party to get them out.

... What we are talking about is an ideological movement that has set its sights on the destruction of the Constitution and the fundamental transformation of our Republic. It is called the progressive movement, and it has been using both parties for a long, long time.

But mainly, it's the Democratic Party that has played host to it. And this parasite has been feeding on that host.

If Obama does the smart thing and re-energize his base, however, Beck will consider that confirmation of his running theory that Obama is a closet black Marxist/fascist radical bent on destroying America:

Beck: America, if these people are only politicians, they will do what they did in 1994, and they will migrate, starting tomorrow, right to the center.

But if we're right, that these are Marxist revolutionaries, that these are progressives who follow Mao, they are gonna put the foot on the gas -- it's not gonna be pretty. And they will eat their own, the Democrats, first.

Beck is obviously reading the Massachusetts results as proof that voters are buying into the Tea Party movement's right-wing panaceas and are repudiating health-care reform. That may not be the case: Media Matters notes that Massachusetts voters already have universal health care, and the issue wasn't of much importance to Brown supporters.

But watch in the coming weeks for calls to Democrats to expel the evil progressives from their midst.

And Republicans, too, no doubt. Which will mean, according to Beck, driving out evil "progressives" like John McCain and Lindsey Graham.

You can always count on Evan Bayh to act like a typical gutless conservaDem. As usual, he draws the wrong lessons from the loss in Massachusetts and takes his cues from Fox and David Broder.

What is the lesson of Massachusetts – where Democrats face the prospects of losing a Senate seat they’ve held since 1952? For Senator Bayh the lesson is that the party pushed an agenda that is too far to the left, alienating moderate and independent voters.

“It’s why moderates and independents even in a state as Democratic as Massachusetts just aren’t buying our message,” he said. “They just don’t believe the answers we are currently proposing are solving their problems. That’s something that has to be corrected.”

Bayh pointed that it’s not just Massachusetts. Independents also rejected Democratic gubernatorial candidates in New Jersey and Virginia in November. “ The only we are able to govern successfully in this country is by liberals and progressives making common cause with independents and moderates,” Bayh said. “Whenever you have just the furthest left elements of the Dem party attempting to impose their will on the rest of the country -- that’s not going to work too well.”

How about this lesson: If the Senate hadn't bowed down to the almighty health-insurance industry and come up with a decent health-care bill that excited the Democratic base, maybe Massachusetts voters would have come out in droves and honored the legacy of Teddy Kennedy.

That's backed up by a poll just released of those voters from Democracy for America:

HEALTH CARE BILL OPPONENTS THINK IT "DOESN'T GO FAR ENOUGH"

* by 3 to 2 among Obama voters who voted for Brown
* by 6 to 1 among Obama voters who stayed home

(18% of Obama supporters who voted supported Brown.)

VOTERS OVERWHELMINGLY SUPPORT THE PUBLIC OPTION

* 82% of Obama voters who voted for Brown
* 86% of Obama voters who stayed home

OBAMA VOTERS WANT DEMOCRATS TO BE BOLDER

* 57% of Brown voters say Obama "not delivering enough" on change he promised
* 49% to 37% among voters who stayed home

I know there is a lot of frustration in the blogosphere right now because President Obama has not been kind to liberals and progressives. And I understand the frustration of it all too well. I still can't figure out why Axelrod and the President don't seem to understand how important their base is. But as C&L and many other sites wrote during the primary, Obama was never a progressive, but a moderate Democratic politician. I've been blogging for five years non-stop to move this country away from conservatism that has been the great destroyer of our society. Chris Hayes at The Nation has a great article up describing the mess that is our political system and what we face as progressives:

System Failure

The corporatism on display in Washington is itself a symptom of a broader social illness that I noted above, a democracy that is pitched precariously on the tipping point of oligarchy. In an oligarchy, the only way to get change is to convince the oligarchs that it is in their interest--and increasingly, that's the only kind of change we can get.

In 1911 the German democratic socialist Robert Michels faced a similar problem, and it was the impetus for his classic book Political Parties. He was motivated by a simple question: why were parties of the left, those most ideologically committed to democracy and participation, as oligarchical in their functioning as the self-consciously elitist and aristocratic parties of the right?

Michels's answer was what he called "The Iron Law of Oligarchy." In order for any kind of party or, indeed, any institution with a democratic base to exist, it must have an organization that delegates tasks. As this bureaucratic structure develops, it invests a small group of people with enough power that they can then subvert the very mechanisms by which they can be held to account: the party press, party conventions and delegate votes. "It is organization which gives birth to the domination of the elected over the electors," he wrote, "of the mandataries over the mandators, of the delegates over the delegators. Who says organization, says oligarchy."

Michels recognized the challenge his work presented to his comrades on the left and viewed the task of democratic socialists as a kind of noble, endless, Sisyphean endeavor, which he described by invoking a German fable. In it, a dying peasant tells his sons that he has buried a treasure in their fields. "After the old man's death the sons dig everywhere in order to discover the treasure. They do not find it. But their indefatigable labor improves the soil and secures for them a comparative well-being."

"The treasure in the fable may well symbolize democracy," Michels wrote. "Democracy is a treasure which no one will ever discover by deliberate search. But in continuing our search, in laboring indefatigably to discover the undiscoverable, we shall perform a work which will have fertile results in the democratic sense."

Digby writes:

It's indisputably true that the political system is run by wealthy plutocrats and much of what passes for democracy is kabuki. Same as it ever was, I'm afraid. But that's not exactly the point. It's still worth participating, doing what you can, containing the damage, stopping the bleeding, fighting the fight --- for its own sake. After all, history shows that humans have managed, somehow, to actually make progress over time. You just can't know what will make the difference.

There's an impulse to say screw it all and not show up anymore because "they're all the same," but I can't do that. For the most part, politicians will let us down because they are...well, politicians, but they aren't all the same. There have been plenty of books written about Florida in 2000. If ballots had been properly labeled so that voters who wanted Gore instead of Pat Buchanan could have done so, we might have had a more fair election. And then the Supreme Court would have been left to watch election night like the rest of us and Bush wouldn't have entered the White House in 2000.

Think of what that would have meant for the country:

• The Bush tax cuts for the wealthy would never have been a reality.
• I doubt we would have had the attacks of 9/11 because President Clinton warned that the greatest threat America would face was terrorism and Gore would have not ignored him like Bush did. But if we did get attacked, then you can bet that Gore would have handled it as an adult. He wouldn't sought "revenge" against Saddam Hussein and prioritized control of all that oil. Gore wouldn't have let Osama Bin Laden get away and the world would still be sympathetic to us.
• Our efforts to put Afghanistan back together would be finished by now, assuming we even would have tried nation-building there.
• More troops and people would be alive and we would have exited the Middle East with our heads held high.
• America would never have invaded and occupied Iraq and over 4,000 troops and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians (if not millions) would be alive today.
• Abu Ghraib would never have happened.
• Terrorist recruitment would have stalled.
• Torture would not be part of the American lexicon and the likes of Dick Cheney and John Yoo would never have descended upon the offices of the VP and OLC.
• John Roberts and Sam Alito would not be on the Supreme Court and the makeup would probably be 6-3 against the radical Scalia-conservative agenda. A ruling on Citizens United is coming soon. Would the court ever have accepted that case? Not a chance and soon corporations will have a stranglehold on our election system much more than they have now.
• George Bush would have been back home in Texas leading the state into secession along with his pal Alberto Gonzalez.
• Nobody would have ever heard of Terry Schiavo.
• A much swifter and more effective response to Hurricane Katrina would have been implemented.

You get my point. These are but a few things that would have been different if conservatives didn't get their hands on the White House. Many of us are fighting for liberal and progressive values everyday and will continue to do so. But when our party fails us, I need to work harder to make sure the party stays on a liberal course, not throw up my hands and dismiss them as all the same.

And in the spirit of that though we need to hold the party establishment accountable. As Digby says there are a number of great progressive challengers already taking on DLC incumbents and we're going to send them a message that's loud and clear. Blue America PAC is already taking on this challenge.

Digby:

Blue America has helpfully set up an Act Blue page with all the progressive challengers who have announced and we'll add to it as more come forward. We're calling it "Send The Democrats A Message They Can Understand."

If you want a Democratic scalp, these candidates are out there offering to do the work to get it done. And you won't be giving Adam Nagourney or Cokie Roberts or Glenn Beck what they want in the process. It's a win that even the villagers and the party establishment can't spin as good news for Republicans.

We'll be having on many progressive challengers in the coming months on C&L and they will be explaining why progressives need to be elected if we want things to change for the better. The new Blue America PAC Act Blue page is called:

"Send The Democrats A Message They Can Understand."

Please join us.

On Saturday we'll have a special live blogging hour with LA's own Marcy Winograd. Blue America has a special announcement at the same time so please join us.

I've been thinking about running against Jane Harman for a long time. I've had reporters quiz me on it and many readers ask me to run, but I've decided not take part in 2010's Congressional election in my home district of CA-36.

There a few reasons why I've taken this path. I think I can do more good for my country and the state of California by concentrating on CrooksandLiars in these troubling times and continue my work for Blue America PAC as the 2010 election comes upon us.

David Neiwert, C&L's Managing Editor and I are putting the finishing touches on our new book we have just about finished titled Over the Cliff, which will require time to promote it, but there is also another important reason which made it so much easier for me to drop out of consideration for the upcoming election: The fact is we have a great progressive candidate already in the race and her name is Marcy Winograd.

She's taking the fight once again to the Blue Dog in our district and I'm putting my full support behind her campaign as she moves forward in 2010. Marcy stands for progressives and since she lives in a progressive district, I'm confident she will fight in ongress for those principles and represent her constituents without compromising as we've seen Jane Harman do so many times before. So please join me in supporting Marcy Winograd for California's 36th District.

Please donate if you can.

And we'll see you tomorrow.

I've been screaming here and on TV that it's up to the House to change the health-care bill as much as possible, even if it's happening in a conference-lite type setting. Rep. Raul Grijalva has been very vocal lately and now says the President needs to get involved.

"The president is having his listening sessions, right?" Grijalva asked rhetorically. "After all we've been through at some point the administration can not be neutral players in this process."

Noting that the President stands foursquare behind the Senate's proposal to tax so-called "Cadillac" insurance policies to raise money, Grijalva put it to him to weigh in on some of the House's priorities. "How do you weigh in on a national exchange? How do you weigh in on a public option? How do you weigh in on the anti-trust exemption?"

The public option is a non-starter at this point, and House leaders, progressives, and key chairmen are pushing the White House to support other priorities, including organizing insurance exchanges at a national level, moving the implementation date for major reforms forward by one year, and, at least, diminishing the impact of the Cadillac tax.

"Watching the fight is not enough," Grijalva said. "The pressure shifts to the White House now."

I received an email with a wrap up and pdf from Rep. Grijalva. Here's the entire document that the House has put together, called CPC Conference Comparison.

I continue to feel that the House language provides better solutions to a wide range of problems with our health care system, especially regarding the public option and the creation of a national insurance exchange. Those and many other unresolved issues, including affordability mechanisms and insurance company oversight, will be discussed thoroughly over the next few weeks. As those conversations take place, I look forward to promoting the same publicly supported, money-saving progressive agenda that I have championed since this process began.”

The attached list of policy priorities was recently sent to Speaker Pelosi, Majority Leader Reid and the White House.

I think the bill is not all that certain to pass at this point.