Democratic leadership to party activists: You dirty hippies just stay home in November

No doubt President Obama will deliver an inspiring and substantively appealing State of the Union speech tonight. With a year of history as a guide, it seems unlikely that either the White House or Congressional leadership will have the guts to stand up for anything he says. (Last year, Obama promised to “call out” Republicans who lied about health care reform. When virtually all of them lied about it — “death panels,” “rationing,” “government takeover” — the White House promptly called none of them out on it in any way that could’ve been described as effective.)

Now health care reform and the Democrats’ electoral prospects this year are pretty much done:

With no clear path forward on major health care legislation, Democratic leaders in Congress effectively slammed the brakes on President Obama’s top domestic priority on Tuesday, saying they no longer felt pressure to move quickly on a health bill after eight months of setting deadlines and missing them.

The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, deflected questions about health care. “We’re not on health care now,” Mr. Reid said. “We’ve talked a lot about it in the past.”He added, “There is no rush,” and noted that Congress still had most of this year to work on the health bills passed in 2009 by the Senate and the House.

Republicans of course are claiming that it’s the American people who stopped health care reform. True to form, this Republican argument is at odds with what might be called “reality.” Most people want a public option or a Medicare buy-in.  Put another way (for those of you from Wasilla): If a majority of the people wanted to kill health care reform and the Democrats responded by killing reform (which they’ve now done)…why would the Democrats be in such bad political shape right now?

Democrats started last year with the White House and overwhelming majorities in the House and Senate. Part of what energized the the base in 2008 was the party’s promise to finally deliver on comprehensive health care reform. Every other civilized nation on Earth has managed to get universal care to its citizens, so why not finally drag our own country into the 20th Century?

After Arlen Specter switched parties and Al Franken was sworn in, the Senate’s Democratic caucus had 60 members. The Democrats had an overwhelming House advantage (which today stands at 257 Democrats to 178 Republicans).

Fortunately for Republicans, the only thing that stood in the way of the President implementing his agenda was other Democrats, who promptly stood in the way.

The progressive base of the party is now deeply disappointed in the White House and Congressional leadership for their combined failure to deliver on health care. Giving up on the legislation will only further alienate the most committed Democrats.

Sure the Republican party is a collection of extremists: birthers, teabaggers, religious kooks, and amateur constitutional scholars who can’t tell the Necessary and Proper Clause from the Nasonex and Pampers aisle. Michael Steele is a buffoon. Fox News is a right-wing circus which ought to insult the intelligence of even the least sentient among us (eg, Sarah Palin).

Polls show that Americans don’t much like Republicans either. But that doesn’t really matter with national Democrats finding new and ever more demoralizing ways to humiliate themselves.

The fact is that Democrats started 2009 with every bit of influence, money, and popularity any party could ever reasonably expect to have. The Republican freak show alone couldn’t have stopped them. It took Democratic ineptitude to do that. So now that Democrats have (to this point) proven themselves incapable of delivering on their promises, who exactly do they expect will donate money, volunteer and get out the vote for them in November?

Partisan Gridlock with Geoff Berg airs every Friday from 3:00 – 4:00 pm on KPFT, 90.1 FM in Houston, 89.5 FM in Galveston, and streamed live everywhere else at www.kpft.org. Connect through Facebook or at www.partisangridlock.com.