This recent article in the New York Times echos a refrain I've started to hear from many quarters: Where are the health care reform supporters in this fight?  As town halls flood wild-eyed right wingers with the heads stuffed full of conspiracy theories about everything from "death panels" to the hope that they can find some way to get the President's citizenship invalidated, they haven't met much in the way of liberal opposition.  It's tempting to ask, as this article does, why it's so hard for people who rallied around to elect Obama and a whole roster of Democrats in a show of progressive force aren't able to muster the numbers to push back against the straight up right wing nuttery and get health care passed. 

The reporter, Jeff Zeleny, makes stabs towards a reason why.  Many of the people he interviews simply don't have enough time to take out of jobs and family to run what would amount to a non-stop campaign.  But what he doesn't address is a deeper, more interesting question--why should they have to?  People did stand up and demand health care reform, along with a host of other economic reforms, when they turned out in droves to make Obama's election an unprecedented victory based on grassroots support.  That this was not enough is not their fault.  It's the fault of the weak-willed politicians who apparently need to be validated every minute of the day to consider pushing for the progressive policies they were elected to push.   

Even after months of the right wing noise machine's misinformation campaigns, the support for health care reform that includes a public option stands at 77%, if the pollsters ask honest questions.  Sure, there are polls out there indicating otherwise, but generally speaking, those are push polls that ask misleading questions that imply that a public option would be mandatory.  Once that disinformation is removed from the question, the people still support a public option.  If the Democrats can't pass a decent health care bill with that level of support, and instead choose to pass a giveaway to insurance companies that increases instead of decreases the people's pain, then they have no one to blame but themselves for their moral cowardice and addiction to insurance lobbyist favors.  Hiding behind the screaming, racist mobs at town halls and pretending that you couldn't go around them is simply dishonest.  Liberal politicians such as LBJ and JFK were able to simply step around the racist mobs that used bullying tactics in an attempt to shut down desegregation.  Democrats should look at that historical example and learn.  Some people are too unreasonable, and that you give their screeching and conspiracy theories an airing doesn't mean you have to take them seriously. 

Progressives are rallying--on blogs, for instance.  The netroots have turned into a steady drumbeat of support for a health care reform bill that's crafted to help the public  instead of increase insurance company profits. The White House is obviously feeling the heat. They responded by calling the 77% of Americans who support the choice of a public option "the left of the left."  That sort of cowardly whining doesn't really inspire the public to rally around you.  In fact, that kind of move convinces the public that the Democrats are so afraid of upsetting the insurance lobbyists that they're beginning to see ordinary Americans, particularly those who have immediate needs for decent health care, as the enemy. We can't rally around behind the President when the President is using passive aggressive tactics to send out the message that ordinary Americans are a pain in his neck, with our demands that the government work for us and actually do something substantive to solve our health care crisis. 

Can you see what's wrong with this picture? The President and Congress practically beg liberals to rally around and support health care reform, and when we do by rallying around the public option, we get passive-aggressive articles in the Washington Post where administration officials suggest we need to shut up.  Which is it?  Obviously, what the Democrats would like us to do is rally around the idea of getting a bill passed, any bill, preferably one that's weakened enough that it doesn't threaten insurance company profits or the Republicans--but the public would rather rally around a bill that would actually get us health insurance that we can afford. I imagine that Democrats who are eyeballing bad bills as "compromise" options and the New York Times would both benefit if liberals showed up at town halls to get into fist fights with right wing nuts that gave up any attachment to reality a long time ago.  The mainstream media would get some exciting footage and articles out of it, and Democrats could use the craziness to distract from their strong willingness to scrape anything out of the bill that could help people.  All the more reason to keep the heat on the Democrats instead of rallying behind them. 

Progressives aren't stupid.  We realize that nasty pieces of work like Max Baucus were working with conservatives to stall the bill into the recess so that it either dies or, worse, the Democrats pass a bill with mandates without doing anything to make insurance affordable, otherwise known as the "steal from the poor and give to the fabulously rich during an economic crisis" plan.  Or, if the President prefers, "bipartisanship," where the Democrats hold hands with the Republicans and sing kumbaya over their willingness to screw the public.  Should they do this, you better bet you're going to see the people who got Obama elected rally once again, but this time to do what they did in 1994--rally around the concept of staying at home instead of voting for any of these do-nothing politicians, and thereby dismantling the freshly won Democratic dominance.