A couple of Saturday must Reads

By Ron Beasley

David Sirota explains how progressives got taken by the Democratic politicians:

The difference between parties and movements is simple: Parties are
loyal to their own power regardless of policy agenda; movements are
loyal to their own policy agenda regardless of which party champions
it. This is one of the few enduring political axioms, and it explains
why the organizations purporting to lead an American progressive
"movement" have yet to build a real movement, much less a successful
one.

Though the 2006 and 2008 elections were billed as
progressive movement successes, the story behind them highlights a
longer-term failure. During those contests, most leaders of
Washington's major labor, environmental, antiwar and anti-poverty
groups spent millions of dollars on a party endeavor -- specifically,
on electing a Democratic president and Democratic Congress. In the
process, many groups subverted their own movement agendas in the name
of electoral unity.

The effort involved a sleight of hand. These
groups begged their grass-roots members -- janitors, soccer moms,
veterans and other "regular folks" -- to cough up small-dollar
contributions in return for the promise of movement pressure on both
parties' politicians. Simultaneously, these groups went to dot-com and
Wall Street millionaires asking them to chip in big checks in exchange
for advocacy that did not offend those fat cats' Democratic politician
friends (or those millionaires' economic privilege).

-----Read the rest-----

Matt Taibbi: How Washington is screwing up health care reform � and why it may take a revolt to fix it

Just as we have a medical system that is not really designed to
care for the sick, we have a government that is not equipped to fix
actual crises. What our government is good at is something else
entirely: effecting the appearance of action, while leaving the
actual reform behind in a diabolical labyrinth of ingenious
legislative maneuvers.

Over the course of this summer, those two failed systems have
collided in a spectacular crossroads moment in American history. We
have an urgent national emergency on the one hand, and on the
other, a comfortable majority of ostensibly simpatico Democrats who
were elected by an angry population, in large part, specifically to
reform health care. When they all sat down in Washington to tackle
the problem, it amounted to a referendum on whether or not we
actually have a functioning government.

----Read the entire thing----

A third must read from Digby

I expect that's at the bottom of their impulse to scrap the public
option. Democrats Believe that the best way to show strength and
leadership is to punch hippies. They've believed this for decades now,
and the result has been to discredit liberalism and validate
Republicans. (But hey, that seems to be the ultimate goal of the ruling
class, so you can't say it isn't one of the things that "works.")

The
villagers agree, of course. They believe America is the mythical
conservative small town of the movies of the mid-20th century and they
are all Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney. (Liberals are Peter Fonda and
Dennis Hopper in Easy Rider ruining everything with their loud music and their pot and their hair.)

---Read it all----