MoveOn? ACLU? Sierra Club? Planned Par..oh wait, no not surprised about that one.

despair, that’s what I’m feeling this week. I hope it’s just because I’ve been sick all week, and therefore emotionally on edge. Without FDL, I wouldn’t have even moments of hope.

I wrote MoveOn and HCAN.

Not the first time I have broached the subject with them, either.

Nauseating.

Ick. Just got an email from OFA, asking me to write an LTE in support of Ob ama’s health care plan.
If it were possible to simply reply, I’d send a scorcher back.

what email did you use for MoveOn? Ever get a response?

This is absurd.

Why would anyone ever go to bat for any of these organizations in the future when they so easily sell out their membership and principles because Rahm swore at them?

Wait ’til Glenn Beck or O’Reilly or Hannity comes after you, guys. It will happen. See who has your back. Clue: it won’t be the White House. And it probably won’t be us, either.

Where does that leave you then?

I clicked on the blue word(s) “MoveOn” in last paragraph above.

I already stopped my monthly contributions to MO, expained why, and where that money was going instead.

I don’t pay for veal feed.

i got a “member survey” from MoveOn today, and told them to stop being Rahm’s beeyotch. They need to get out of the Veal Pen, I told them, and call for a national strike for Public Option. They aren’t reflecting their members’ views. They are scared of Rahm’s cussing.

This isn’t the MoveOn I remember from General Betray-Us days.

I don’t expect my response to make a big deal, but I feel better for it.

I dunno-MoveOn started airing radio ads against the 3 Dems who voted against both POs on Finance:

New ads target Democrats who voted against the public health insurance optionThe three Democrats who voted against both public health insurance option amendments in the Senate Finance Committee on September 29, 2009 are the targets of a new ad campaign from MoveOn.org Political Action. The ads will run in the home states of Senators Kent Conrad (D-ND), Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), and Max Baucus (D-MT).
Hear the ads below, and then see the facts.

http://pol.moveon.org/sfc_vote_ads/

I think they can be swayed.

I agree with you all. Kill the bill.

WTH are they smoking?

I’m pissed. What is the point of all this? Everyone wants affordable health care and what we get is the requirement to buy health care?

%#^#$@

MilkFed.Org,
Scallopini Club,
Planned Piccatahood

and I know there are multitudes of dedicated folks working for all these orgs, but Jane’s point about failure to support these Progressive Reps is rather glaring.

love of all things ‘access’ went some distance in giving us the TradMed we have, disappointing to see these allies making the same mistake

Perhaps there’s a typo. This being the veal pen, should it be “MooooveOn?

I’m fairly sure none of these groups have praised the Baucus bill…I certainly know HCAN hasn’t.

One thing that will be happening in a couple of weeks that we should be thinking about is the appointment of conferees to the resolution committee between the house and senate.

On NPR today I heard some members of MSM talking about how a public option wouldn’t be the panacea that many supporters think it would be. They claimed that it would still be an insurance policy you had to make sizeable monthly premiums for & that it wouldn’t be that different from private policies.

Maybe I am a little paranoid but I sensed they were trying on some level to try to help Obama by getting people less excited about a public option.

HCAN might want to have a few words with Kellie Dupree, then.

I wrote them too, with a comment “et tu, Move On?”

don’t know if they care, and that makes me sad. Move On was the one “organized” group left in my brain untouched by cynicism.

No more.

So what is this really about? Are the heads of these organizations afraid that if they don’t “go along to get along” they’ll lose their “A-List” party status?

This is just sickening…on so many levels.

Is it possible the Senate progressives can learn from the House progressives and threaten to vote against any bill that does not include a public option?

A week or so ago I said in half jest, ACORN should go Green or Socialist party, after spin cycle the Dems put them through.

Seeing the names above.. I am no longer kidding.

I should go back and add every single one of the organizations named in Jane’s post to Fifty Ways To Pull A Trigger.

Baucus is a piece of crap. My wife and I just had a baby. She was in the hospital for two days and the bills are in excess of $28,000! Now, United Health Care is trying to push about $3,000 of the bill onto us. This is after taking over $600 a month from my check. Obama better side with the people when the time comes. 51 votes and cloture. Pass the Public Option, without one republican vote. I am trying to keep the faith.

Who got to move on? Move out of the way Move On.

no.

It’s hard to believe that these groups are as stupid as the Democrats. When the base leaves the Democratic Party, they will stop supporting these groups as well. We are fed up with the weakness and betrayal. Enough is enough. Sitting out a couple elections may be the only way to get the attention of these cretins. If our money, our grassroots, our phone calls and our canvassing and organizing doesn’t earn us their loyalty, then let them do without all of it.

All I could find on Unity ‘09 was Ben Smith’s piece Jane quoted, but that’s back in March 2009. they don’t have a website, so they’re probably just a little office on K Street. A lot has happened since then. I think ACLU quit them for starters. But whatever the case, Unity looks like just another neo-liberal cooptation scheme to get progressive orgs to act AGAINST THE INTERESTS of their members/donors to suit the Obama administration’s neo-liberal agenda. The proverbial lipstick on a pig.

But given that these are progressive groups, it seems to me a Donor’s Strike might be in order. If these groups don’t publicly repudiate Unity ‘09 and start bouncing back their emails, we’ll give our hard earned cash to people who will do some good with it instead.

The short answer is…um…Nope. (Just a SWAG.)

I wrote angry emails to the organizations listed above, that I belong to. This is my email to the ACLU:
Subject: Don’t become White House lackeys

It has come to my attention that the ACLU is a member of Unity 09. I am a regular contributor to the ACLU. I am upset that Unity 09 is trying to silence dissent among members about the President’s upcoming gift to Big Insurance/Big Pharma, in the form of mandates to buy one of their products.
Without a strong public option, which Obama is resisting, this is outrageous. We will not have a “right” to refuse to pour money in the coffers of huge corporations. We will not be given a public option to choose instead.
Please do not take your marching orders from Unity 09. Show your independence by rejecting the White House call for your organization to cheer for a giveaway to corporate America.
Signed, Me

I think we need to learn from this. This is — Obama’s favorite phrase — a “teachable moment” for progressives.

The lesson is, again, message control. By successfully painting all opponents of the President’s — errr, Max Baucus’ — health “reform” plan as crazy obstructionists, we are locked into a position of powerlessness, and this is why these “liberal” groups are coming out swinging for such a horrible bill. Basically, the message has become “Obama is a good and reasonable man — and a brilliant, 11-dimensional chess player, that anyone who opposes his reforms is just crazy.” This lumps all opponents into the same group — crazy right-wing teabaggers and ideological progressives are all cut from the same cloth, the story goes — crazy, un-Serious people who don’t know that Real Change Requires Compromise.

If we want to change course, and (perhaps more importantly) if we ever want to win battles in the future, we progressives are going to have to start winning a media war and making “Joe Sixpack” realize that the stuff we want is, with few exceptions, exactly the same as the stuff he wants.

Until we can do that, we will find ourselves outmaneuvered at every turn. I’d wager that more than a few folks at MoveOn are not happy about this turn of events, but do they really want to be seen as part of the “crazy progressives who shot down Obama’s big health reform bill?” Their funding would dry up overnight.

If, instead, we’d been able to get the message out that without at least a robust public option, “health reform” is basically a sham, if we’d been able to firmly plant that message in voters’ minds, we would never be where we are today. A health reform bill with a public option would pass overWHELMINGLY in Congress, and Obama would basically be forced by a tide of public pressure to sign it (even if he weren’t inclined to).

So, again, for the TLDR crowd: we are losing this battle, or barely hanging on, because we haven’t learned how to be more adept in creating a consistent, easy to soundbite narrative in the media.

By blocking any plan that does not include a public option, you do not mean a Democrat would vote against cloture, right? That would be too much.

Great letter, Carolyn

Today I received [snail mail] solicitation from the ACLU. I’ll use your response as a pattern.

Yesterday I received an e-mail from the DCCC bragging about their recent $1.3 mill. fund-raising, and soliciting more. Those fools make it nearly impossible to hit “reply” to successfully get something back to them, so I went on the DCCC blog & posted the following:

I’m sorry, Chris [VanHollen, chair of the DCCC], but I have ceased donating to the DCCC. This is the FIRST communication I’ve seen from it supporting the public option.

Obama has been HORRIBLE on this issue, and the DCCC I assume continues to support those “democrats” [the ones Rahm was so eager to fund in 2006] who oppose the public option but are eager for “mandates” that will enrich insurance companies without any oversight or improvement in services.

Obama and the Democrats have been totally ineffective on this important issue, and now we may get the worst of all worlds: mandates, no cost controls, no oversight of insurance company outrages and no public option. Boy, are middle class workers going to love being REQUIRED to send $$$$ to the insurance companies, and penalized through the IRS if they don’t. This will be an anvil around Democrats’ necks for decades.

I’m only donating to PROGRESSIVE candidates through ActBlue. I don’t want a dime of my hard-earned $$$ going to Health Schuler, Mike Ross or the other “Blue Dogs,” and I wish I could get a refund for the huge amounts I donated to Obama and Democrats in 2008.

I’ll let you know when they come crawling to my door

Given MoveOn and HCAN stance on public option, it may be that Kellie Dupree is a runaway doggie escaped from the veal pen. I emailed both groups to let them know that this woman is costing them money.

I unsubscribed from OFA over the public option shenanigans. When you unsubscribe, they ask you why and you get a blank screen, not just check box categories, to give them a piece of your mind. Pointing out that organizing for America only means organizing for Obama when he gets back on the side of Americans feels really good.

Has HCAN endorsed the progressive block strategy? I’m pretty sure they haven’t.

Late, but I followed the link and explained to MoveOn why I stopped being a member of my local council (I’ve been disappointed for awhile, plus other personal issues). They claim to read everything. Hope they are getting a lot of these.
I’ll try the unsubscribing from OFA method, too.

This doesn’t mean I’ll put up with ridiculous assaults against the Pres., (I nearly went over and ripped off an especially offensive bumper sticker from an old man’s car this morning…restrained myself), but I am massively disappointed. Again.

The proper sound bite narrative wasn’t a PO. It was Medicare for All. Everybody in, Nobody Out. That’s what we should sell. And we should not rest until we have it.

“we progressives are going to have to start winning a media war and making “Joe Sixpack” realize that the stuff we want is, with few exceptions, exactly the same as the stuff he wants.”

I think that the media war and Joe Sixpack’s realizations are different things. We’ve won the latter, without the media. You do not have 75% support of something without winning over the man in the street.

The problem is not public perception. The problem is that the elected officials and liberal organizations that supposedly represent us, that won with the support of the man in the street, do not feel that they have to pay any attention to what we want. They do not fear us. My own so-called Representative, Betsy Markey, beat a solidly entrenched opponent in 2008 because voters repudiated her predecessor, Marilyn Musgrave. Markey is now essentially Musgrave Lite–all the corporatist policies without the residual honesty her troglodyte of a predecessor. I honestly preferred Musgrave.

I have accordingly defunded the Democratic Party, MoveOn, and the ACLU by ending my modest contributions. In 2010, I will actively campaign against any Blue Doggish pseudo-Democrat regardless of who the opponent is. Either I get a real, Liberal Democratic candidate, or I boycott the race.

This is making my head hurt.

I’m new to the progressive blogosphere, brought here by the health care debate. I have been making fairly regular contributions over the past 2 to 3 months to progressive groups in support of strong health care reform. I’d prefer single payer but have been supporting causes related to the public option because that’s all there is.

I’m on mailing lists for FDL, DFA, HCAN, and MoveOn, among others.

In very recent emails, HCAN and MoveOn have both appeared to be in support of the pubic option. If they’re caving or have caved, why am I not seeing it? Are there lines I should be reading between?

Help! Someone tell me what group/s I can trust to pursue a strong public option. I’m not interested in supporting any group that is waffling on the issue, or is likely to waffle.

Thanks for any advice/explanation anyone can give me. I’m trying to do the right thing.

Great question OutWest, but I’m afraid it’s epu’d into irrelevance. (I’m always about a day and 30 FDL posts into the past myself, nearly impossible to catch up, pointless to comment.) Please re-ask in a more current relevant thread.