Seriously, how huge is this?

[Cary]

Do you want to go into 2010 saying you are so fractious that you can't muster your own 60 votes?

Didn't we try going into a mid term election having failed to achieve anything? Didn't that work out very badly for us?

I'm just not seeing the downside here. To the contrary, it's a huge success that we can parlay into even greater successes. As opposed to what alternative? Parlaying a miserable failure into more failure?

I'm not getting the DU negativity. What am I missing?

[NJmaverick]

1. Politically this is a huge win for the Democrats

had this bill failed to pass they would talk about a do nothing Congress and compare Obama's inability to get the HCR bill passed to Jimmy Carter's failings. The GOP would be bragging how they defeated a terrible bill no one wanted and the Waterloo meme would become standard fair.

Instead the Dems can brag about a huge accomplishment, the President will score points for getting it done and their plate is now cleared to take on other pressing issues. This is huge.

[LiberalAndProud]

2. I keep comparing this to the Clinton health care debacle.

Am I wrong in remembering that it was the last piece of progressive legislation to be considered during his two terms? My brother (self-labeled socialist) was most unhappy with him. While Clinton was still president, my brother opined that putting Republicans in power would hasten the day of the people's revolution. It's the only explanation I can offer for what you may be missing.

[NJmaverick]

3. I think Clinton's and the Congress failue certainly hurt them in that

first congressional election. After that Clinton spent the next 6 years battling the Republicans in Congress.

[BlueCaliDem]

4. Apparently many progressives are getting nostalgic for those dark times

since they seem bent, here on DU and elsewhere, for repetition of it. I think, like Howard Fineman once said: "they underestimate Obama at their peril".

He's getting it done while he still has power and hopefully the American people and disenchanted progressives, will see that and continue to give him more.

The last thing we need are more repubs in government. They can't govern for chit.

We need to give the President the same power FDR had with a powerful Democratic congress (he had 68 to Obama's 60) and, well, unlike FDR, I doubt Pres. Obama will ever get a country-first repub group of Senators and Reps so we'll have to make due with getting more Democrats into both the Senate and keeping what we have in the House.

[goclark]

9. Exactly nt

[Cary]

6. This was what I was saying.

I too remember the effect of Clinton's health care effort--Newt Gingrich and his idiotic contract on America.

At the time I was representing a lot of clients before the IRS. While I have no love for the IRS what they did, using the IRS as a whipping boy, was cowardly and disinformative. This success emboldened them to go on to even more disinformation abuses. Witness the disinforming us into a war with Iraq.

How is that "conservatives" can coalesce around a disinformation campaign while we break down over a huge legislative success? I see some hope that after the smoke clears we all will see this for what it is: an important beginning. I want a single payer system but we're talking about overcoming a huge money interest here. We have to be resolute. We have to persist. This money interest is counting on us not being able to follow through.

[JimWis]

5. I agree. It is a huge success.

[Peacetrain]

7. Its huge.. it really is.. Merry Christmas Cary..

I stop in and just did another jaw drop in gd and gdp.. you just can't make this stuff up sometimes.. I don't know, maybe they really believe it? God help them if they do.. that is a dark and scary place

Someone stringing together 8 speeches out of a multi thousand set of speeches, and some of them from 2009 to try and "prove" Obama "campaigned" on something, I just don't even know what to say.

[Cary]

8. Merry Christmas to you and yours Peacetrain

It is a cesspool. Keep the faith though.

Whom would you rather team up with? Barack Obama, Joe Biden, David Axelrod, Rahm Emmanuel et al. (and us here in the Barack Obama DU Group)? Or the rabble in GD and GDP?