Healthcare: The Defeat of a Common Enemy

(Revised from a reply on Ian Welsh's blog. Ian Welsh is a prominent progressive blogger who objects to progressives rejoicing at the passage of a deeply-flawed health care plan.)

I think the progressive blogosphere and congresspeople are rejoicing in the defeat of an enemy

Yet that defeat is also a defeat of progressives. Fighting among ourselves will only make the defeat worse. One thing that wasn’t clear to any of us last August is just how bad a defeat for the Democrats would have been: it very likely would have put the radical right back in power. So I think standing on principle is both ill-mannered and poor tactics. Sure, we can blast the Congressional progressives for not keeping their promises. We might even be able to get some of them replaced. But would this strengthen our position? It would not. Long term, I think, conditions have rarely been better for major reforms and perhaps the formation of a new major party in the USA, and that is where we need to focus our efforts.

Croak of the Day: We Have An Early Winner

John Holbo, satirizing Jonah Goldberg:

The Liberal Fascist octopus has sung its swan song, the jackboot is thrown into the superconducting super collider of culture-war melting pot calling the kettle black!

Croak of the Day: Brad Delong

To Brad Delong, on Mitt Romney repudiating a national health care plan very similar to the one he supported in Massachusetts:

I did not know that you could have a circular firing squad made up of only one person.

Honorable mention to Michael Bérubé's satire of the radical-right response to the health care plan, "The Night the Country Died:"

In the deep of a Sunday night
In the land of the health care bill
When the free republic died
And they talk about it still

On Tea Party anti-taxism

Mark Thoma (Economist's View) quoting a remarkably wrong Bruce Bartlett article:

the Tea Party crowd appears to believe that federal taxes are very considerably higher than they actually are […] it's hard to explain this divergence between perception and reality.

Me, croaking in comments, paraphrased: the Tea Partiers haven't decided taxes are "too high" because they believe erroneous data; they have decided to choose erroneous data because they believe their taxes are too high. Unfortunately, as Converse found nearly 50 years ago, this is not an area where reason rules.

[edited on the day of publication for clarity]

Croak of the Day: Simon Johnson

"They Saved the Big Banks But Kind Of Lost The Economy Doing It"--Simon Johnson at Baseline Scenario.

(Yesterday, really.)  Read the rest.