Idiots, perhaps. But it is generally useful to have some idiots to the left of the most leftward Senator, if only to make said Senator seem more in the mainstream. IMO.

What is this, our equivalent of the RNC "purity test"? Attacking Bernie Sanders? Talk about missing the target.

I'm a strong believer in single-payer, but I also know that no matter how hard Bernie were to fight for it, there would be no more than 25 votes for single payer in the Senate at this point. Rather than whining about perceived shortcomings of friends like Sanders, the solution is to put more energy into electing Senators who will support single payer.

These folks want any health care reform to fail this year -- evidently so things get bad enough that several years from now policy makers will suddenly see the light and pass single payer. Yeah, right.

In the meantime they ignore that whatever comes out of Congress this year, the legislation will expand Medicaid access for millions of low income Americans, provide subsidies for millions of others to help afford insurance, restrain some of the most damaging insurance practices (pre-existing conditions, benefit caps, gender discrimination, bogus excuses for terminating benefits), and allow significant state experimentation with models of health care financing and delivery (possibly including state single payer programs).

As a disabled person whose access to health care depends in part on the success of health care reform, I'd like to remind the self-righteous folks trying to kill this bill from the left that, imperfect as it is, it is the only realistic possibility right now -- and many of us can't afford to wait forever for the passage of perfect single payer.

For all of the many many shortcomings of the legislation, millions and millions of Americans will benefit from passing it. If they want to put ideological purity above the lives of those people, they are missing this point.

OK, maybe it's just me being a contrarian, but I think it is very useful to have a group to the left of the public option advocates. If the P.O. were the farthest left element of this bill it would be stripped in a heartbeat. But there is something else: single payer.

Let them rail against Sanders. I bet he just laughs it off and goes back to work.

I'm with numediar. Without more fighting spirit, we're going to get more DLC corporate nonsense like Slick Willie and our current President.

You want real change? It's gonna take a lot more fight than we've seen so far. If you're going to mock people who are really fighting for the change you're whining you want, then you deserve what you get--NOTHING.

So we can't get 60 votes for a watered PO, so let's scrap the whole thing and go for single payer? yeah, I'm sure the conservadems are opposing the PO because it's not single payer.

I don't get the logic of people who think like this. Can't get part of the pie, so they then demand the whole thing.

I saw nothing disparaging against Sen. Sanders in Dr. Flowers Speech. I got the text of it from United Progressives and posted it on my blog: http://ellenofthetenth.blogspot.com/2009/11/dr-margaret-flowers-of-pnhp-we-call-on.html