I'd like the HCR bill passing. Then a long series of very difficult votes for Republicans, where they either have to piss off their base or piss off independents, and about which Dems can get excited.

This should be easy to engineer with decent small bore bills that would be good progressive policy, too.

Not holding my breath.

Perhaps the 'enthusiasim gap' has more to do with people tending to their jobs, families, local volunteering and favorite TV shows. Being in perpetual campaign mode is more of a right wing thing. Also if your looking for work or working two jobs, politics and politicians are not a priority. Dems typically understand that governing is a full-time job, they'll want results come Nov.

i think there is plenty of blame to go around for the gap. in part, my sense in talking to people is that there was a massive expenditure of time and energy to get Obama elected, and a lot of people thought "wow, if we can elect the first non-white President, the entire world has changed!" For some, they got complacent and rested - they'd spent a lot of time politicking (for the first time in their lives), and now had to get back to other things. For many, the fact that it was not some act of magic that changed everything was a disappointing introduction to politics, and they went back to apathy.

in part, too, it is fair to say the Republican plan has worked in that regard: by making Obama choose between the substantive "change" he promised and the political/partisanship/tone "change" he promised, they ensured that at least some of his supporters would end up disappointed.

but part of the blame lies with Obama as well. i'll leave to others to argue what his agenda should have been, how mcuh more he should have twisted arms or abandoned bipartisanship. my criticism of Obama is that it is hard to keep the rank-and-file energized when they see so little energy from the top. I appreciate that he is intellectual and grounded. Still, if he wont cheer about his successes, how does he expect that others will? When the "enthusiasm gap" matters, politics -- like it or not -- is in part about pep rallies. The reality is that a neo-tribalist country treats politics increasingly like team sports. The Tea Parties played to this dynamic. The Democrats won't hold a pep rally -- they continue to make us sit through a trigonometry lecture while the wingnuts are at the assembly having fun.

Obama has had more successes in his first year than most other Presidents. even his supporters likely don't know that. He has had more anti-terrorism successes than his supporters know. Being an "adult" as President is fine. Being a robot is not. This Administration needs to turn up the fire, the emotion, the horn blowing. Because if the Dems in DC don't seem excited about their record, they really can't expect those of us out in the states to be excited come November.

For most people it has been "meet the new boss, same as the old boss"

I think at least some of this enthuasism will pick up once Republicans start running hardcore ads smearing Democrats all day long. It's truly under appreciated how much support you can gain from your opposition hammering you all the time. After all, nothing brought Democrats together more than the Bush presidency. Had they not been such over-bearing jerks, it'd be unlikely we'd have gotten an Obama presidency.

I'm not sure why people imagine politics works in a steam-roller sense, where voters always follow whoever's strongest; as I've always seen it as being more of a listing ship: The more the ship tilts to one side, the more people will scamper to the other side. And that's good, as it prevents the ship from flipping.

Similarly, Republicans spent years tilting the ship as far to the right as possible and will continue to berate anyone who tries to stop them from flipping it. And by doing so, they alienate everyone but the diehards. The biggest challenge Republicans face this year is themselves. And they'll shoot themselves in the foot once their onslaught of attack ads begin.

If the Democrats want there to be enthusiasm about the health care bill, they're going to have to start fighting back against the lies. Unfortunately a lot of the lies are coming from people who claim to be on the left.

What Terry sez...

The corporate-owned politicians are in the majority in the Big Village. As they have been for some time. These days what is good for the corporations is devastating for people. And, oddly, it is the Villagers who are supposed to be convincing us to eat these corporate shit sandwiches because "it's the best we can do" and "deficit deficit deficit" or whatever distracts, whatever mollifies...

Obama persists in this juggling and incrementaling and legitimizing corporate rule -- and the Dims in the Senate are bought corporate clowns through and through, as are many in the House.

At times it looks like some disaster will yank them into rebellion agst their corporate masters, but so far no such luck...

Oh yeah, the Supreme Court -- yeah, that's the ticket... we'll git our democracy back through those folks, yassir!

Whatta country!

There is still plenty of time for Democrats this year. All they have to do is pass the health care bill, push a new jobs bill every week, and repeat the portion of Tom DeLay's interview with Candy Crowley where he announced that unemployment insurance just encourages shiftless bums 24/7. Go after the credit card companies and big banks non-stop. Show the American people what Democrats are going to do to make sure they have a chance. Contrast that with the party of NO.

The Dems are too phuking stupid to understand this. Gawd, how I hate to be represented by suck gd losers.

Democrats need to deliver on controlling health insurance premiums, because that's what bothers most people. (Provider costs too, but focus just on HI right here.) Many do care about the uninsured but need financial relief. We heard recently here and elsewhere about that cap on charge over costs (but I don't recall just what sort of costs, see below.) That seems like a way to control some definition of profit margin and hopefully, what HI companies can charge.

So would that prevent the sort of premium increases we see now? If the HI companies can only take in X amount in premiums such as not to exceed some margin over what they pay out, that should prevent - when it kicks in - HI companies from outrageous charges. I have heard some caveats and surely it depends on how and how well it is done. I mention also since people arguing about this seem to have forgotten that measure.

(BTW this sort of policy is *not* to be confused with the phony alternative of just limiting "profit margin" per se. All that means is, the company couldn't retain more than some margin over its *total* costs - then all they have to do is pay a lot to their execs and call that "labor cost", it's meaningless and worthless. IOW the permitted margin has to be set with respect to the payouts themselves, with "reasonable" other costs being worked in to start with.)

"Maybe a health care reform signing ceremony in the Rose Garden, perhaps?"

I prefer Matt Yglesias's idea that the Democrats should fake passionate support for some lost cause issue and let it lose 59-41 in the Senate. Why waste a real issue on us liberals? You own our votes anyway, right?

In addition to the points some others mention above, there is a certain passion that goes with being out of power and being absolutely certain that the people running the show are totally fucking up the country, which can only be saved by the minority party's energetic intervention. How well I remember the halcyon days when Bush was destroying the world and those of us who recognize the depth of his insanity and corruption were pulling together for a common cause. I don't think I'm rewriting history when I say we bitched constantly on blogs about the spinelessness of Democrats then, too, but only a handful of outliers said they'd sit out elections or vote third party.

Then Obama won Iowa, and...oh, man.

The basic problem is that the Democrats are now two parties: more or less traditional liberals, on the one hand, and more or less traditional conservatives, on the other. Given the extreme radicalism of those who call themselves Republicans today, bipartisanship means getting these parts of the Democratic party to agree. It's not inspiring or exciting, nor do conservative Democrats seem to realize how awful their fate will be if they don't reach agreement pronto. Every one of them from a southern or border state will lose office, and there will be no new federal actions that any decent or rational person can stomach, except perhaps for defense spending. The Democratic Party will be discredited for a generation, and enthusiasm, help, and money will disappear like the Winter snows.

The enthusiasm gap exists because all the new voters Obama got out to vote have either turned against him as in the case of independents. Or as in the case of all of the "something for nothing, im gonna vote for a black guy crowd"- who expected the man with zero experience running anything except his month to transform our nation into some socialist utopia are now disillusioned having to face the facts there is no free lunch after all. We the opposition, the silent majority, are seizing the opportunity to move the the GOP back to its Conservative and Constitutional roots. Most American's realize there has never been a more exceptional country than ours in all the history of mankind. we refuse to see it destroyed and replaced by some quasi neo marxist Social Democracy. The Son's of Liberty are ready to take our country back!

"They just have to decide to deliver."

Telling. You make no distinction about WHAT they deliver, just that they deliver something, anything.

That's exactly the problem with the PTDB crowd. They think passing something horrible is better than passing nothing at all. They are in fact willing to engage in a little fratricide in order to get something (anything!) passed. They'll give the republicans everything in order to pass something (anything!). They'll reward the worst actors in HCR to do it. They'll stab their base in the bck to do it.

The only thing they won't do is stand ion principle and try to pass something that might actually help. Because that might fail, and then they wouldn't have passed something (ANYTHING!).

And after all that's what matters. Solving problems is for those people who have ideals they believe in.

The treasury looted; financial reform eviscerated; mass destitution left to fester; civil liberties abandoned in a panic; human rights repudiated at home and waved like a club abroad. Imagine if health insurance costs continue to climb after phony reform!

What makes you think anyone would notice amid the unremitting disaster of this presidency?

The "individual insurance mandate" is UNCONSTITUTIONAL at the Federal level.
When the Supreme Court knocks it out, what is their fallback position??