Dear Progressives: You’ve been had …

Not at NetRoots but close

I’ve been busy getting the youngest back to University and entertaining a friend as well as trying to get my own stuff together for semester’s start so I didn’t go to Netroots and I haven’t followed it very closely. Just got back in from a day of driving way too many places to see two headlines that juxtapose nicely. First, is at HuffPo and the headline is “Valarie Jarret Heckled and Hissed at Netroots Nation”. The other is from Politico and that headline is “Party leaders prepare liberals to accept a health care reform deal”. Do you think we need to play connect the dots? Sure you do!!!

So, we’ve known for some time that this is the health care reform plan that really isn’t about health care or reform. Now, we’re being asked to bend over, open wide and … well, you catch my drift. I’m not about to take one for Howard Dean or the Gipper, Gypper, POTUS, whatever. I’ll admit to being a fully recovered Deaniac. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Here’s Politico’s story.

After the toughest week yet for health reform, leading Democrats are warning that the party likely will have to accept major compromises to get a bill passed this year – perhaps even dropping a proposal to create a government-run plan that is almost an article of faith among some liberals.

With August dominated by angry faces and raised voices at town hall meetings, influential Democrats began laying the groundwork for the fall, particularly with the party’s liberal base, saying they may need to accept a less-than-perfect bill to achieve health reform this year.

“Trying to hold the president’s feet to the fire is fine, but first we have to win the big argument,” former President Bill Clinton said Thursday at the Netroots Nation convention, a gathering of liberal activists and bloggers who will prove most difficult to convince. “I am pleading with you. It is OK with me if you want to keep everybody honest. . . . But try to keep this thing in the lane of getting something done. We need to pass a bill and move this thing forward.”

“I want us to be mindful we may need to take less than a full loaf,” he said after recounting the political troubles that followed his failed reform effort in 1994.

It won’t be an easy sell. Even former national party chairman Howard Dean this week threatened Democrats who don’t support the public insurance plan with the prospect of primary challenges – the first rumblings of what could devolve into a Democratic civil war over health care.

So, how’s that sitting with the Netroots folks? They may have been polite to the Big Dawg and the Big Scream, but Valarie Jarett didn’t fare too well. It was a hootin’ and hollerin’ time up there in Pittsburgh! Why, you’d have thought it was just another town hall meeting with a bunch of Beck and O’Reilly acolytes! Do you suppose there were some sino-peruvian-lesbian plants up there or has some one finally awakened to the smell of bad milk in their cafe latte? Again, this was reported by HuffPo.

On Saturday morning, one of the president’s closest advisers, Valerie Jarrett addressed the Netroots Nation conference in Pittsburgh. And while attendees were largely supportive throughout the question and answer session, the reception was warm at best. The defining moment, in fact, came when Jarrett was hissed and heckled.

Roughly midway through the session, Jarrett was pressed to explain why the President was “continuing so many of [Bush’s] policies many of which he criticized as candidate Obama.” Knowing the mood and makeup of the audience – largely progressive activists from across the country – she acknowledged off the bat that it was “a fair question.” But from there, things grew a bit rough.

Jarrett defended the work Obama has done outlawing torture, and releasing Office of Legal Counsel memos detailing how such interrogation practices came to be. At that point, a protester in the audience screamed out a question about why the White House was trying to keep additional photographs of detainee abuse from becoming public.

“I heard somebody shout out about the pictures,” Jarrett replied. “Everybody knows what’s in those pictures. And this is where it gets very delicate and I know it is a touchy subject for this audience. But what he is trying to balance as president, is keeping us safe, not giving ammunition to people who already have ample ammunition from what they’ve seen before to be adverse to us.”

More shouts and protests followed. “I can’t hear you,” Jarrett said. “You know what you’ve got to do? You’ve got to figure out a way to get your question on here [pointing to the computer on stage that was receiving emails from questioners]. We are not going to have shout outs from the audience.”

Wow! Are the folks at Netroots part of the mob now? Have some of them finally realized that if they don’t cooperate with the current meme there’s a place for them under that big ol’ bus the rest of us were thrown under during the primary last year? Are they really willing to sell out every single item on the liberal/progressive agenda for enhanced status quo? Are these possibly those chickens we kept hearing about? Are they finally coming home to roost? And, do you think it’s too late to get some REAL health care reform out while we’re at it?

Listen, Netroots, POTUS said he wouldn’t sign anything that didn’t include a public option. Are you going to join us to hold him accountable for those words or are you going to cave into this pressure to win one for the Gipper or is that the Gypper?

Drink up and make room for Netroots Nation Under the Bus!!!!

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