Once long ago, health care reform was as much about containing costs as it was about extending coverage.

Obama negotiated away any bargaining rights for prescription drug prices, et al., so we don't get those cost savings. Instead, we get a mandate to buy into ever more expensive health care.

As Bob Somerby/Daily Howler has pointed out over and over again, we pay per capita about double for health care as all the other industrialized countries - and we're starting with a much larger population to reach greater scales of efficiency. Does. Not. Com. Pute.

Well no shit a public option is popular!

As I recall it, the people generally labeled the "loony left" spent most of the HCR debate pointing to evidence that the public option had something like 70% support in the general electorate and should be part of the package. Meanwhile Obama supporters were tut-tutting, saying shut up, we can do that later, when it's got some popular support. And some republican called Jason Miller was saying the whole HCR effort was madness and should be whittled down to some minor insurance regulation reform - because that was what real progress looked like.

I like this new crazy left Jason Miller better.

I've yet to figure out whether you centrist/moderate rhetoric, or policies, or both.  On the former, absolutely--I've been trying to make that case.  On the latter, not on a number of big economic and environmental issues.  The approaches that are labeled substantively "centrist" or "moderate" are weak and entirely inadequate tea on a whole raft of issues--climate change, health care, financial reform, budget policy to name just four.  They are in most cases not worth fighting for because they just kick cans down the road while reducing public pressure to deal with them adequately.

Health care is one issue that is being raised to ground the discussion in this thread. 

I'll put financial reform, one aspect of it, out as another.  

You stated in your "Where the Democratic Party Went Wrong" post your continuing concerns about the health of our financial system, without yet elaborating on what you think would be adequate to restore stability and a competitive playing field for banks that are not huge. 

Simon Johnson and James Kwak make what I think is a compelling case in their book 13 Bankers that we need to break up the big banks, or we are going to be right back, coming soon to a neighborhood near us, facing the Hobson's choice between making the taxpayers bend over to bail out the big boy fuckups or else let the global economy collapse.  Greenspan himself came around to the view that too big to fail means too big, which he stated publicly. 

So let's look at who among our elected officials was trying to act on this.

Specifically let's look at the Kaufman-Brown amendment to put strict size limits on the size of our banks.  It failed in the Senate 33-61 on May 6, 2010: http://www.opencongress.org/articles/view/1865-A-Failed-Vote-on-Breaking-up-Banks

The White House was opposed.  

Looking at the 33 ayes, 29 were Democrats.  3 Republicans--Coburn, Ensign and Shelby also voted yes, as did Independent Sanders.  Looking at the Dem ayes, I think it's fair to say that taken as a whole, with some exceptions, this list includes most of the most left/liberal/progressive members of the caucus, generally speaking: Boxer, Sherrod Brown, Murray, Leahy, Levin, Merkley, Harkin, Franken, Feingold, Durbin among them.  Cantwell, who has been heroic on financial reform, voted aye.  Reid voted aye. 

Dodd, Chair of the key Senate Committee, voted no.  Kerry voted no.  I'd love to know why Tester, who ran as a populist in Montana, voted no.  Baucus and Bayh--probably the two Democratic senators who come first to mind, along with Lieberman, as singing your song, Jason, making a point of openly dissing the Democratic party's supposed extreme liberalism and partisanship, voted no. 

Five of the six senators who abstained were Republicans, the exception being the ailing Robert Byrd. 

The big banks were at this point on the run, in the wake of a couple of reports that came out at that time putting them even further on the defensive.  That an amendment of this sort, a really big amendment, could get 33 votes in the Senate despite being opposed by a Democratic President, is remarkable.

So when the s*** hits the fan and we're looking at another bailout or complete meltdown, think back to this discussion.  Ask yourself who were the people--what part of the political spectrum did they come from for the most part--who were pushing the hardest and most courageously to deal with the grave systemic problems that remain in the wake of our now even more hyperconcentrated financial system.  Even as, as a reward for their efforts, they get to be regularly bashed publicly by some members of their own caucus who know they can get on the Sunday talking head shows any time by decrying the party's supposed extremism

If I have to hear the same argument that Senators from more purple or red-leaning states had to vote to keep the megabanks huge in order to win re-election, I'm going to have to ask a few follow up questions to try to find out why. 

Because I had thought that the big banks are actually not so politically popular in areas where they don't exist, and where, on account of the huge advantage they are granted in the interest rates they borrow money at compared to all other banks, they are actually killing local community-based banks who are a key source of financing for small and medium-sized job-creating businesses.  This is something I really don't get. 

Jason, have I mentioned how glad I am to see you here?

Jason, nice to see you grazing in the pasture too.

As usual, I'll taking a little time to digest your two posts before I ask a question or two.