Liberals are attacking President Obama on many fronts regarding the tax cut deal. They don’t like the deal itself, and many are also alleging that it’s stupid politics – he should have held out for a better deal.

Andrew Sullivan has a different take, explaining how a fight with his liberal critics actually helps him. Also, the deal itself will likely stimulate the economy, and a better economy helps his re-election prospects. I agree with Andrew.

President Obama and the Republicans have struck a deal on taxes and unemployment benefits. The question now is whether liberals like Nancy Pelosi will really try to kill the deal.

Here’s the most important fact that angry liberals are ignoring – President Obama wanted to have this fight BEFORE the elections. The House could have passed a tax cut for those below $250,000, and then dared the Republicans in the Senate to filibuster it. This would have been the ideal issue for a dramatic filibuster showdown and would have drawn clear lines between the parties heading into the election.

But the Democrats chickened out. Pelosi listened to terrified Dems who are afraid of their own shadow when it comes to taxes, and they punted until after the election.

It was a huge mistake on every front. None of us know how it would have played out, but it’s hard to imagine a scenario in November worse than the beat-down they received.

Now these liberal Dems have the nerve to criticize Obama for cutting a deal, when it’s clear he has no choice but to strike a deal if he wants unemployment benefits extended and possible votes on START and Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. The criticism is totally ridiculous.

Theda Skocpol let’s them have it.

My most recent entry ended up with the extension cut off. Here is more of what I have to say, provoked by the senseless hysteria among liberal commentators, led by MSNBC and HuffPost.

Many liberal pundits are making absolute fools of themselves bashing Obama over the Gulf spill. They are just emoting and have no solutions anyone could try. There is no easy out on this, and the patience to build and support adequate government oversight of industries is the key here, as in many other areas.

It is not just right-wing government bashers and wealthy corrupters who have destroyed the nation’s capacity for governmental decision-making. It is also
short-sighted liberalism that tries to turn everything into a personal crisis, and assumes that presidents are omnipotent commanders. Since the 1970s, liberalism has emphasized rights, identity politics, and action through courts or presidential orders. It has neglected the patient business of building government and creating enduring majorities through Congress.

Well said.

Cable television has of course made this problem even worse. Everyone is in a rush to analyze everything, and if something doesn’t go the way the activists want, many of them need to find an instant villain. If Obama decides that he has to give on a point so that the larger legislation can pass, then he’s immediately dubbed a sell-out or a weak fool by people who are supposed to be his allies (or at least share the same goals).

There’s nothing wrong with disagreeing, and the left should make their voices heard. Primaries against Democrats who consistently oppose the left make sense as well.

But silly “kill the bill” calls during the health care debate showed just how hysterical many liberals can get when they don’t get their way.

We’re starting to see them same thing on energy. The notion that Obama can somehow bully Midwestern Senators from coal country to accept carbon caps is ridiculous. Of course liberals should press the case, but attacking Obama with emotional outbursts solves nothing.

Energy should be focused on those on the right who screamed “drill, baby, drill” and who did the bidding of big oil for years. For years we’ve had the opportunity to invest in a clean energy future that could help our economy and also slow down the billions we are sending overseas to people who want to destroy us. Politicians on the right did everything to stop it at every turn. Attack them.

Meanwhile, we won’t get a perfect energy bill, but if liberals can keep their head while arguing their case we can make a substantial down-payment on a clean energy economy.

As long as Fox News continues to present itself as “fair and balanced,” Jon Stewart will have plenty of material to work with.

Howard Dean no longer wants to kill the health care bill. He finally figured out what every progressive should have known (unless they were so consumed with anger and emotion over the loss of the public option) – that this bill is a good start.

It appears that most Democrats in the House feel the same way. Now, will other hysterical lefties like Keith Olbermann come along? We’ll see.

I just watched Howard Dean on Meet the Press, and while he’s not supporting the health care bill, he’s no longer arguing that we should “kill the bill.”

Dean acknowledged that a number of improvements have been made the the Senate version over the past week, and he insists more improvements need to be made in conference. Many of his points might be attainable, so we can expect more improvements as the conference gets underway.

He doesn’t support the bill, and he may not support the final compromise, but his arguments are now much more constructive in how the bill can keep improving. He didn’t mention the reconciliation process once, and he refused to repeat his suggestion that Democrats should kill the bill.

He also explains why conservatives naturally hate it. It will, over time, lead to more government as the notion of universal coverage becomes expected by Americans.

Ezra Klein has made a name for himself during this health care debate. He’s one of the most sensible writers out there, and he’s great with the details and the big picture.

Here’s the latest big picture argument as to why liberals should move the bill forward.

I still believe health care will look more similar than different when the day is done. A good bill will pass, if not a sufficient one. A sum of money will be appropriated, and a basic infrastructure constructed that will be, in the long-run, understood as a tremendous, even unlikely, political victory. The next steps will be easier, because $80 billion is easier to find than $900 billion, and because the argument over whether America has a universal health-care system and whether government provides some of the funding and scaffolding will be over. The money will be there. The scaffolding, too. The universal structure, built around the mandate and the exchanges and the subsidies, will be firmly in place.

At this point, an odd dynamic has developed, in which most all of the right, and some on the left, believe they’d be better served by the defeat of this bill. It is unlikely that they are both correct. But the right has had substantially more experience than the left opposing government initiatives before they can take root and grow into popular entitlements.

Look at the development of Medicare and Social Security, of Medicaid and S-CHIP, the Swedish and Canadian health-care systems, public education. Social Security was designed to exclude African Americans. Medicare didn’t cover prescription drugs. Medicaid was mainly for pregnant women and their young children. Canada’s system was limited to a single province. There was no University of California at Los Angeles.

It’s difficult to conclude that these things slip backward rather than marching forward. The $900 billion for people who need help, the regulations on insurers and the exchanges that will force them to compete, the structure that will make health care nearly universal and the trends that suggest more people — and more politically powerful people — will be entering the new system as employer-based health care erodes — it all makes this look even more like the sort of program that will take root and be made better, as opposed to the sort of common opportunity people should feel comfortable rejecting. It doesn’t feel like that now. But then, it rarely does.

Every liberal should read this. There’s a reason the Republicans are abusing every stall tactic they can muster in the Senate to delay this bill. They want to kill it all costs. It will lead to everything they despise, and everything liberals want. The details now really don’t matter. Once this is set in motion, they’ll never be able to turn back the clock.

In that context, it’s stunning to hear people like Howard Dean and Keith Olbermann play into the GOP’s hands by arguing that the bill should be scrapped. In one sense, as Kos pointed out, it’s healthy to have a real debate on the left. But Dean and Olbermann have taken it too far, risking everything.

Ezra Klein has it right – Howard Dean has become a “hostage-taker” in the process, threatening to blow everything up on one or two points. How does this make Dean any different from Joe Lieberman?

Klein also goes on to explain the prudent purchasers language in the bill and why it should be sufficient. As Dean acknowledged, this was John Kerry’s issue, and Kerry is very happy with the language.

Paul Krugman is asking progressives to take a deep breath.

There’s enormous disappointment among progressives about the emerging health care bill — and rightly so. That said, even as it stands it would take a big step toward greater security for Americans and greater social justice; it would also save many lives over the decade ahead. That’s why progressive health policy wonks — the people who have campaigned for health reform for years — are almost all in favor of voting for the thing.
*****
By all means denounce Obama for his failed bipartisan gestures. By all means criticize the administration. But don’t take it out on the tens of millions of Americans who will have health insurance if this bill passes, but will be out of luck — and, in some cases, dead — if it doesn’t.

The hysteria gripping the progressive movement is out of control, capped by Keith Olbermann’s melodramatic comment last night. Get a grip, keep negotiating, and pass a bill.

Some like Keith Olbermann and Kos have suggested that the health care bill should be opposed unless the individual mandate is removed.

Ezra Klein explains why the mandates are necessary.