The critical progressive elite is coming UNHINGED over Death Panels and Obama's judgment being questioned...HARD

Richard Cohen, WaPo:

Try this on for size: Palinism. What is it? It is an updated version of McCarthyism, which takes it name from the late Sen. Joseph McCarthy, the Wisconsin liar, demagogue and drunk, and means, according to Wikipedia, "reckless, unsubstantiated accusations, as well as demagogic attacks on the character or patriotism of political adversaries." As far as we know, Sarah Palin is not a drunk.

But she certainly shares McCarthy's other attributes -- and this one as well: the ability to drive the debate. In McCarthy's day, it was anti-communism coupled with national security, and it hardly mattered that he frequently did not have his facts straight. He got huge amounts of attention anyway.

With Palin, the subject is health care, which in many ways is the Red Menace of our day and lends itself to a kind of political pornography

One Option Is To Go On Offense

By Eugene Robinson also WaPo

WASHINGTON -- It's true that politics is the art of the possible, but it's also true that great leaders expand the scope of possibility. Barack Obama took office pledging to be a transformational president. The fate of a government-run public health insurance option will be an early test of his ability to end the way Washington's big-money, special-interest politics suffocates true reform.

Without that option, what Obama now calls "health insurance reform" still would be better than no reform at all, I think. But frankly, it's becoming hard to tell. So many genuine reforms have already been taken off the table -- fully universal coverage, the ability to negotiate prices with the drug companies -- that expectations are ratcheted down almost daily.

Giving up the public option would send many of Obama's progressive supporters into apoplexy, yet the administration has sent clear signals that this is the path-of-less-resistance it's prepared to take.

Rage the Left Should Use
By Robert Kuttner
Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Where are the liberal protesters?

Wall Street and the abuses of corporate America crashed the economy, leaving regular people anxious and financially insecure. Yet the far right, not the reformist left, is getting the political windfall.

Something is severely off when economically stressed Americans confront members of Congress about "death panels" in the Obama health plan. The rumors, fanned by talk radio with a little help from Republicans, are false and even delusional. Yet the anger, if misdirected, is genuine.

People should be plenty angry about their jobs and their mortgages and their health insurance. With health care, however, virtually all of the fears attributed to the Obama health reform efforts more accurately describe the existing private system.

It is private insurance companies that ration care by deciding what is covered and what is not. Private plans limit which doctor and hospital you can use, define "preexisting conditions" and make insurance unaffordable for tens of millions. For many, all this can cause suffering and sometimes even death. Our one oasis of socialized medicine, Medicare, has the most choice and the least exclusion.

The misdirected citizen anger at the Obama health reform efforts is a surrogate for broader, entirely legitimate, popular economic backlash.

That's a good one... people are upset about QALY's because Lehman brothers helped destroy all their massive 401k's !! It's not Obama, it's not health care, it's not cap and trade, it's not mid east policy, it's not bowing to the Al Saud, or any of the other items on the growing list, and it's not about the cumulative effect of all these things ..it's because, I presume, George Bush allowed fat cat repub Wall street and the banks to ruin everything that now Obama's party is spoiled!

Because while she might not have a ready answer about 19th century SCOTUS decisions up to a level we would all prefer... Palin is from among the people and understands what people like Richard Cohen, Kuttner and Robinson are so removed from, they don't even know it.

They don't even know it.