Well played, Rahm. Stung by the intense White House effort to court the votes of moderate holdouts like Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, and Senator Ben Nelson, Democrat of Nebraska, liberals are signaling that they have compromised enough. Grass-roots groups are balking, liberal commentators are becoming more critical of the president, some unions [...]

Joe Klein, he’s simply better than you — just ask him.

A Doggy Christmas Surprise set to Brenda Lee singing Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree.

Ol’ Chuck Norris seems to have bitten off a little more than his punchdrunk brain can handle: Lastly, as we near the eve of another Christmas, I wonder: What would have happened if Mother Mary had been covered by Obamacare? What if that young, poor and uninsured teenage woman had been provided the federal funds [...]

Al Franken, like many junior Senators, has to spend some time in the chair of the President of the Senate. He did so today when Joe Lieberman gave a long speech on the Senate floor about health care. Lieberman initially asked for 10 minutes, and the Senator reached that mark, and Franken, as per Senate procedure, let him know. . .

Sen. Byron Dorgan is unhappy that his amendment to the Senate health care bill on reimportation, which at one point appeared to have the votes for passage, failed after a late intervention from the Democratic leadership to preserve a deal with the drug industry. But Dorgan goes much further in pointing fingers specifically at the Obama Administration for the defeat, even intimating that the White House wrote a letter from the FDA about safety without the Commissioner’s knowledge.

Lanny Davis, who’s done as much as any corporate Democrat to attack liberal positions on behalf of corporate interests, has been doing the circuit to defend the travesty Senate health bill. But he made the mistake of personally attacking Jane Hamsher. Call the waammbulance!

Trumka says the labor movement needs to get back at the forefront of economic policy, including monetary, fiscal and industrial policy. Unions need to lay out a clear new economic agenda that will work better and stand as an alternative to the markets-first, people-later neoliberal agenda.

More than one-fifth of Massachusetts residents are forgoing medically necessary care because the health insurance they have is too stingy to make that medically necessary care affordable.

If progressives can’t push for better health care reform now with a huge grassroots push, I don’t see them having more success after Washington moves on to other topics. As long as this 60-vote myth persists in the Senate, and progressive are not taken seriously, I don’t see how any progressive change (be it on health care or any other issue) will ever happen.

The only way I can see progressives being able to fix the bill later is if they can hold something the big industries really want hostage. Progressives need something important they can trade in exchange for better reform. The only thing progressives can hold hostage for real reform is the individual mandate. The insurers, providers, drug manufacturers, etc., all want the individual mandate. What company wouldn’t want the government to force people to be its customers?