MSNBC The Rachel Maddow Show - 18 Sept. 2009: Firedoglake's Jane Hamsher - Putting spine into Democrats by force. New 'Change Congress' ad targets conservative Dems who don't vote like Democrats, including supporting the public option, like Mike Ross of Arkansas.
HAMSHER: We made a compromise several years ago when the Democratic Party started sort of luring these conservative Democrats into the party to expand the majority, and now we're paying the price for that. We're seeing that we're trading away our values, meaningful health care reform, to these people who aren't even representing their districts, unless their constituents are Pharma and the insurance companies...
MADDOW: Jane, you are an aggressive strategist and I know you think about these things in broad strategic terms. Why is it that you think that primary challenges, that naming and shaming conservative Democrats, will work?
HAMSHER: Well, I think if it were a situation where Mike Ross's district wholeheartedly backed him up, I would say who am I to say otherwise, but that isn't the case, as the polling indicates. He and Blanche Lincoln are running around saying that the public option would cost more money, it would be too expensive. Yet the Commonwealth Fund found that $2,000 a year would be the savings the average person would experience with a public plan. So, they're not being honest in what they are doing, and, as you mentioned, they're taking huge donations from the medical-industrial complex.
So I think the question we need to ask is 'Why?' Because 70 percent of the country wants this, Rachel, and if we can't have it, it's going to be because these conservative Democrats decided to sell it. And people are really upset about that and they're asking a lot of questions about how we go forward from here, and how we make sure that a Democratic Party respects Democratic values.
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