I’ll be on MSNBC at 3:30 pm today with David Shuster and Tamron Hall

Ever since the Democrats took over Congress, it’s been one excuse after another as to why nothing but corporate-friendly, anti-progressive legislation gets passed.

We couldn’t end the war because we didn’t have "60 votes" (which they knew was bullshit, as Paul Kanjorski admits in the video).

We had to add $200 billion in tax cuts to the supplemental to make Chuck Grassley happy even though he wouldn’t vote for it.

And despite the fact that 90 Democrats signed a letter in 2007 saying they would vote for no war funding that didn’t include troop withdrawals, only 32 would abide by that promise when it actually mattered — just under the magic 40 needed to block it.

Now when the Republicans are threatening to vote for single payer and it actually stands a chance of passing, members like Joe Baca, Eddie Bernice Johnson, David Scott and Charles Rangel who have cosponsored H.R. 676 in the past say they will not even vote for it. Andre Carson, Linda and Loretta Sanchez, Betty Sutton and Jim Moran won’t commit.

Gotta get under that magic 40 somehow.

As Raul Grijalva said, "I understand the intentions; they’re good, but now I think the American people want results."

So, we’re not going to kick the football this time and say "well, we love you because you’re the one who gets to show up on another issue near and dear to our hearts in numbers insufficient to actually do anything about it, while somebody else ducks their head." Because until we say "nobody leaves the building," we will keep losing on everything.

So we announced a contest. Slinkerwink held the first round over at Kos, but unfortunately there is a crowd of people who weren’t interested in making progressives walk the walk as well as talk the talk, and they took it out on Slinkerwink personally. Since that is not in any way productive to the effort, or fair to her, we are going to have the semifinals and finals at FDL and welcome anyone who enjoyed taking part in the effort to continue doing so here.

So, without further ado, our Day I Semifinalists:

Mike Thompson: Mike Thompson hails from CA-01, which includes Napa, Mendocino and Humbolt counties. With a partisan voting index of D+13, that means his district is safely gerrymandered and he’s got a 13 point advantage over a Republican opponent. He won his last election with 68.2% of the vote vs. 23.3% for the GOP’s Zane Starkewolf. The Green candidate picked up 8.5%.

So why did Thompson join the Blue Dogs? Well certainly not because his district is "conservative" and that’s what he’s got to do to hold it, as we’re told so often. Thompson was one of 45 ConservaDems who signed an angry letter to Obama in May the day after lobbyist stakeholders met with at the White House to announce that they were submitting "proposals" that later became "deals" memorialized in the Baucus bill. They didn’t want to be "left out" of the process.

Thompson has broken with his Blue Dog brethren and supports a public option:

Another key factor in suppressing costs, Thompson said, is introducing a public option to compete with private insurance companies, which will drive costs down. Thompson said plainly that he supports the public option, and that he doesn’t imagine it is possible that any bill will pass the House without one.

Like many members in strong Democratic districts, Thompson talks about the cost-control measures of a public option. Which is great, it’s in keeping with the supposed Blue Dog principle of "fiscal responsibility." But if a public option is not in the offing in a final conference bill, he risks nothing to say it now and vote for something without it. The question is — if he thinks cost control is important to his constituents, why won’t he be one of the mere 40 Democrats it takes to insure that it stays in any health care bill?

Thompson has taken $81,750 this election cycle from the health care industry, including $1,000 from AHIP lobbyist Steve Champlin of the Duberstein Group, who also represents Health Net and Novartis. He also took $1000 from Tom Daschle, who brags about being the guy who stovepipes info from lobbyist deals to members of Congress.

Debbie Wasserman-Schultz: Debbie is also in a D+13 district. But she has leadership ambitions, and those aren’t cheap. She says she is working for a public plan but that she’s "not someone who draws lines in the sand." Good DLCer that she is, drawing "lines in the sand" is something she reserves for controlling the budget.

Her donations from health care interests are $34,000 this cycle, but she’s got some heavy hitters. She’s taken money from the PACS of DaVita, Humana, Amgen, GlaxoXmithKlein and Johnson & Johnson, and her personal supporters seem to be big on choosing lobbying as a career. She’s taken contributions from Kelly Bingel, David R. Thomas and Dan Castagnetti from the Mehlman, Vogel and Castagnetti firm, who all represent AHIP. And also $1000 from Karen Ignani personally, the brain trust behind AHIP who helpfully conceived of the blueprint for the Baucus bill.

It will be interesting if Debbie’s lack of "lines in the sand" allow her to scurry over to the AHIP Baucus bill and vote for it if it comes down to it. Will her need to "get something passed" coincidentally allow her to do the very thing that her lobbyist donors want her to? What a win-win that would be.

Danny Davis: Davis was elected to Congress in 1997 and the district has a D+18 PVI. A cosponsor of H.R. 676, he is also the CBC’s Health and Wellness Task Force. He is a signatory to a letter to President Obama dated September 3, stressing the need for"a strong public health option that will allow the nation’s more than 46 million uninsured Americans more than half of whom are people of color to finally have access to affordable, meaningful health care coverage no later than 2013."

How hard will he fight for what he believes in? Well, apparently not at all. The letter doesn’t mention what he said at an August 6 DFA meeting:

Davis said that he told the members of the Progressive Caucus that, “President Obama lives too close and is too popular [for Davis to vote against Obama's bill].” He then said he hopes the President “sticks to his guns.”

Davis has taken $33,000 from health care interests this cycle, including PAC donations from AHIP, The American Hospital Association, Amgen, Baxter Healthcare and Blue Cross Blue Shield. If he winds up casting a vote that gives them everything they want, he apparently plans to hide behind the President.

All of these members are in strong Democratic districts and for one reason or another refuse to take a stand on the thing they say they believe in — having a public option in the final bill.

Vote for the one whose excuse you think just doesn’t cut, the one who just can’t seem to"walk the talk."