Damned If You Do; Damned If You Don't...OR...All Day/Every Day

If the Democrats pass a watered-down, Public Option-less, un-expanded Medicare version of health care "reform," many new and casual Democratic voters could be turned off and might not show up.

If the Democrats scrap the whole thing under the guise of "waiting until after 2010," the Republicans will just run on "Democrats can't get anything done," which if you ignore the both things the Democratic Congress did prior to the 2008 election and the things President Obama did that didn't require Congress, is accurate enough to fool some of the less politically adapt voters.

If the Democrats cut their loses and try to do this again via reconciliation, both the House and the Senate go back to Square One. That leaves Fox News, conservative radio, the insurance indsutries and every Beltway Bobblehead enough time to make yet another assault on healthcare reform (to say nothing of the Democrats). Also, there's no guarantee that the Senate Democrats will have the 51 votes they need (they thought they had 60 for this mess, and look where mere assumption got them).

Before I make my suggestion, one thing here: despite what Fox News or conservative columnists say, we do not have a liberal President nor do we have a Democratic Party run by progressives. If I remember the activist grassroots meme correctly, the Plan was first more Democrats, than Better Democrats. Well, I hate to break this but we haven't even finished the first phase yet (Lieberman ain't a Democrat, so this "We have 60-votes" battle cry was always a facade). The House of Representatives is light years ahead of the Senate, the Supreme Court and yes, the White House in terms of having progressive/liberal representation. Now that Democrats are creeping toward having a true majority, the next phase (which in all honesty, should have begun sometime this January) is making sure that by Fall 2010 there are "Mo' Better Democrats" in office. This also involves the grassroots, but I'll get to that in a minute.

Here's my humble suggestion:

1. Part One: pass the damn bill. Whatever the Senate Democrats can get by whoever they're courting for the 60th vote (whether Lieberman or Snowe or whoever) do it. Then blitz the airwaves claiming victory. Yes; true liberals will know that's bullcrap, but the goal here is to convince John Q. Public that this is Phase One of obtaining true universal heath care. The beauty of this part is that liberals can scream bloody murder while Congressional Democrats applaud and outlets like Fox News won't know what to think. if they endorse the bill, they side with the Democrats; if they agree with liberals that this is a mess the moderates they're trying to turn will be confused; if they try pull a "We like this part but not that part" they'll lose their core audience.
2. Part Two: (assuming that this is procedurally possible) pass Medicare expansion and/or either Single Payer or the Public Option separately via reconciliation. I would think that this needs to be accomplished before the Summer of 2010. FYI: The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act is the closest we have to a federal bill that wasn't necessarily considered to be solely budget-oriented.
   
3. Part Three: The Senate Democrats must remove Joe Lieberman from his committee chairmanship before the 2010 elections. It doesn't matter whether it's done in a month or the week before the elections. This move is the only way the Democrats show that while they believe in reasonable compromise, they are not complete lapdogs. And if they fail on this front...
   
4. Phase Four: the grassroots must hold everyone who blocked or stifled healthcare reform accountable. That ranges from backing more progressive candidates to cutting the donations of those who are showing their ass. This is the hardest of the three, and if the grassroots can't get rid of these guys don't expect their co-workers to do it when they return for another term. I'll repeat myself: there can be no Pyrrhic victory here.
   

One of the things that separates the Left from the Right is that the Right is in such a state of denial they refuse to ever back down. But for some reason, people started writing articles and doing news stories about "The GOP in Exile" as if the Party did a collective "No Mas" last fall. Far from it. They re-organized, pulled crazy conspiracies from their butts and flung them at the wall until something stuck. Then the media (in predictably drama-addicted fashion) picked it up and next thing you know a bunch of scared old white people are calling the POTUS an illegitimate Marxist Muslim and screaming that they don't want the government to interfere with their Medicare.

In short: they don't stop fighting; and if progressives really want to have a voice in politics, they need to fight just as hard...all day every day.

There can't be a break. Now sure; individuals can rest, take a vacation, spend time with a loved one, take the kids out...but the movement cannot take a break. This past August proved that definitively.

UPDATE: After a little pondering, I expanded the suggestion to four parts; there's a new #2.