This notion that everyone loves the health insurance bailout bill except “they” (liberal purity trolls) seems to be a real idee fixe for Obama, and I’m not sure why.

Don’t Hope– Get Mad and Do Something!

The Progressive’s Guide to Raising Hell might struck you first, as it did me, as a sort of ‘path not taken’ over the past political cycle, but its also a path forward. Jamie Court understands the political landscape, exactly what happened, and how it could have been avoided. This is not a book that wallows in being right, but instead focuses on where to go next. Ballot measures play a large role. Many of the activists here, having just come out of activist participation in the Marijuana initiatives, will gain from the insights of this book.

When the votes were tallied on the night of November 2, 2008, I was at a bar in Moab, Utah – the one rabid Democratic stronghold in a rabidly Republican state – to enjoy the hysteria as Barack Obama was summoned to lead the country out of the disaster of eight years of George W. Bush. People shook hands, hooted, clinked glasses, got drunk, raised fists, wept. The good liberals had elected a visionary Democrat to the presidency, who, blessed with a Democratic majority in Congress, would fashion “hope” and “change” into a palpable policy. I was told that in parts of Brooklyn, my hometown, voters ran through the streets banging pots and pans. The feeling was of religious jubilee – the new dispensation was upon us, and 2009 would mark the emancipation from the old rottenness. Corruption and fraud and deceit and war and oligarchy would be washed from the body politic. It was the beginning of the restoration of the republic.

I find this memo from Third Way (PDF) to be comically poorly timed. No surprise they mine any and all data points to claim the need for Democrats to move to the right, but they also claim the path to victory this November is not rallying the liberal base, but winning over the moderates–despite the fact that Democrats have already won over moderates.

Obama is at it again, complaining about “griping and groaning Democrats” and frankly just not looking very presidential.

Gibbs, with his contempt for the “Canadian health care system,” is merely reflecting the attitude of a White House that marched into the health care debate committed to giving corporate “stakeholders” everything they wanted in exchange for campaign donations to Democrats.

Justin Krebs is the cofounder of Drinking Liberally and its spin-offs Eating Liberally, Screening Liberally, Laughing Liberally, Reading Liberally, and Living Liberally. Over 50,000 people take part in weekly gatherings in 300 communities around the country (and some outside it), including in my town, where liberal political talk is on the agenda. Given the inclination of many, if not most, Americans to avoid politics, and the lack of any support groups for liberals in the most right-wing communities, this has to be a good thing.

There has been a significant increase in the number of people choosing to label themselves as “conservatives” according to a new report from Gallup.

Examining the extremism in both American and Pakistani political discourse.

This week was actually big victory for progressivism. Not in health care, but in student loan reform. Finally, a wasteful and worthless corporate welfare program was eliminated. The taxpayer dollars that were being thrown away on private profits will now be redirected to help low income students attend college and pay down the debt. This is what progressive victories look like.