Thanks to those very same conservatives, this entire country now resembles nothing so much as their stereotype of a loser writ large.

Lucky for the country, the Democrats control the Senate and the House. Otherwise, all kinds of bad stuff would be happening — like extending the Bush tax cuts.

Let’s highlight the absolute trouncing given by Ron Sparks in the Alabama Governor’s race to Artur Davis, an African-American candidate who thought it would be a good idea to try and run the general election in the primary, amassing the voting record of a Dixiecrat and ignoring the black political leadership in the state.

Good for Ron Paul for telling Rahm and his little pro-bank whip operation to get stuffed. He’s seizing a moment of transpartisan anger at the banks and he’s pointing it straight at the Wall Street apologists. It will be interesting to see how far he can take it.

Many have asked if the progressives in the House will stick together and keep the health care bill from passing if it has mandates but no public option. My answer is: it depends.

I’m frankly not sure how they hope to hold this thing together, because the one thing members fear more than anything is losing their seats. Rahm never worries about the progressives because they have no financial base and they’re in strong Democratic districts, so they risk a lot less voting for a bailout than those in close seats. This time around, there may be enough progressives who are willing to join with the Blue Dogs and vote against a bill with a mandate, but no public option alternative, to push it over the top (or under the minimum of needed votes, as the case may be).

Last night, Harry Reid announced that there would be tentative deal (or deals) on the public option. The deal has not been scored by the CBO and, in fact, the deal may only be a deal on what ideas they will have the CBO score, so that they then can than use that information to make the actual deal. Nor does it sound like the deal included the whole Democratic caucus, so this deal might not even have the 60 votes needed, thereby making it not really a “deal” at all.

Health insurance companies don’t vote, Senators. Voters do, and they want a public option.

The Senate’s ConservaDems don’t appear to have the necessary 60 votes to change or remove the public option from the Health Care Reform bill. So why was the opt out provision introduced?

I can only guess that the House didn’t vote on health care before the election because (as Pelosi has signaled) they didn’t have the votes. Which is crazy, because if Rahm really cares about a “w” you have to wonder why the White House wasn’t whipping for the bill regardless of what it said just [...]

I’ve had a lot of concerns about the neoliberal agenda that seems to drive much of what comes out of the White House. But if there’s been one strategy that I wholeheartedly concur with, it has been their effort to dismantle the Chamber of Commerce and disempower Fox.