I put the following idea to you: The HCR bill is not THE problem. It is, of course, A problem but it is not THE problem. Obama and Rahm have made it crystal clear by lying to our faces during the campaign and immediately pouncing on any progressives who dare to cross the administration that they have nothing but disdain for our hopes for the country. Single payer is only lunacy and even their weak assed compromise of a 'public option' was a subterfuge to allow them to claim that they had fought for some small grain of actual reform before giving in and letting their benefactors have the largest slice of the pie.
No, my fellow progressives, THE problem is the continued privatization of profit with the total absorption of the cost of any repercussion by the tax payers....in short what some have termed corporate socialism, is killing our country through continued inequality of wealth.
This problem is exacerbated by the fact that those in power refuse to do anything about it. No matter what the reform, as long as the corporatist solution involves contracting out services to private corporations that could be performed for far less by a public non-profit entity, there will be no real reform. The Overton window on this issue is essentially painted shut because the progressive left is continually folding whatever their hand may be in order to receive the crumbs from the table in bills that maintain this corporatist system.
The 'centrist' (aka corporatist) Democrats will never concede their precious system because the progressives will always give in and vote with them in the end...because the pundits will tell them they could never hope to prevail and that they would be 'irrational' to hold out their votes, or in blog-speak be purity trolls.
Until the progressives make a stand, we will never get a seat at the table. As long as they know we will give in our ideals will be the first ones thrown under the bus in negotiations. They are laughing at us, all the way to the Wall Street banks to deposit their Goldman Sachs contributions...and after 'serving' will be accepting rather fat positions at any of the dozens of corporations that will benefit from their 'work'.
So, if the definition of insanity is continuing to do the same thing in the same situation while expecting different results....what does that make progressives who time after time do the 'logical' thing and settle for what they are told is the best they could get, rather than making a stand and forcing themselves to be heard?
They will take calls all day from progressives, and politely thank us for our input before ignoring everything we have to say unless we FORCE them to listen to us and represent OUR values over theirs. Until then, we are just votes during election years from voices that can be safely ignored in between races. Until then, we are suckers for our own party.