Under the very best of conditions, Democrats still need cooperation from several Republicans to get anything of substance passed, and when that cooperation is not forthcoming, it means that nothing gets done -- exactly what the GOP wants.

What a cowardly, craven, gutless position that is and that has been the whole trouble with Democrats for the past 30 or more years. In fact the Democrats only need 50 votes in the Senate, 50 + Biden. That is enough to pass law, the 'parliamentary' procedures of the Senate are merely traditions nowhere mentioned in the Constitution. The Democrats have every ability to 'get things done.' If they don't, it's their fault. Nut up and accept that.

What the Democrats really need is party discipline. If health care reform is not the issue on which Democrats wish to take names and crack heads, then what is? If the Democrats won't take advantage of their best opportuntity in 60 years to pass health care reform, how can they continue to claim to be the party of Harry Truman? Harry had nuts, remember?

It's reported today that House progressives are telling Obama there will be no bill if there's no public option. I hope to God they make good on that threat. Without a public option, a health care bill that forces people to buy insurance they can't afford will be nothing but a giveaway to the insurance companies and an absolute disaster for the Democrats in every possible way.

I'm beginning to believe what Digby suggested today, that the whole effort to get Republican votes and 'bipartisanship' was simply an effort to provide cover for unsavory deals struck with the insurance and drug companies. However there isn't going to be any cover, because the Republicans aren't going to give Obama anything. Obama better think twice before he dumps the only part of the health reform bill that actually insures reform. He may not only lose the White House for himself and Congress for the Democrats, he may lose the party itself. Isn't that something to be afraid of?

At some point, you have to stop with the bullshit compromises with corruption and stand up for principle. Otherwise principle will never win. And if you have to go down, if you have to lose, it's far better to go down with principle on your side than without. If the Democratic party isn't willing to die on principle, then it simply doesn't deserve to live.

People with jobs create millionaires. If this were not so, any millionaire could go to Somalia and create jobs. But they can't.

Where did this myth come from that Jimmy Carter was some wild eyed liberal? He was a conservative Southern Democrat, a pious UFO seeing born again Baptist who was obsessed with cutting government programs (particularly water projects), who aided the Mullahs in Afghanistan, who had a nutty scheme to run nuclear missiles on tracks around the country, and opposed the Kennedy health care plan and as a consequence was opposed by Kennedy himself in 1980.

Do you think Ted Kennedy ran against Carter in 1980 for no reason at all? Is there is anyone here who wants to tell me that the late, great and now mourned Ted Kennedy was some sort of wild eyed ideologue? We've might have done a lot better with Kennedy in 1980 than with dumb Jimmy Carter. At least Kennedy might not have been so hapless in the debates with Reagan as Carter was.

Many of the programs we associate with Ronald Reagan were in fact started by Jimmy Carter. That would include the massive military buildup of the 1980s and the cuts in spending for social programs. Jimmy Carter was constantly trying to suck up to the right, just like Obama today. And just like Obama, he got no thanks for it either.

Obama, a conservative Democrat, is now being called a socialist or worse by the people he's trying to be concillatory to. And likewise conservative Democrat Jimmy Carter was called a flaming liberal by the same folks. And if Obama fails just like Jimmy Carter failed, will you establishment dumbshit Democrats spend the next thirty years telling us how Obama was too liberal? I bet you will!

You conventional wisdom morons need to get your history straight. You need to get some facts, not some retreaded baseless pundit yabber. The stuff you were told and are being told by the pundits is shit, hence your political advice is worse than useless, it's actively harmful.

You say the Democrats attempted to be 'ideologically' pure. But what are the facts? The facts are that for 30 years after the defeat of McGovern the Democrats have followed your advice and have run away from the left as hard as they could. Jimmy Carter was the governor of Georgia, hardly a 'leftist.' Dukakis from Mass. was a mealy mouthed wimp who couldn't defend himself or admit to being a liberal or stand up for his wife. Bill Clinton triangulated and executed a retarded man and bombed an aspirin factory to show how tough he was. This is ideological purity? This is what wins for Democrats? Maybe ideological purity is what we need more of and not less of.