Yesterday Grijalva was perfectly willing to hand over his Congressional authority to a new Catfood II Super Congress to slash Social Security and Medicare when he vote for the all-cuts Reid bill:

Harry Reid Offers Debt Ceiling Bill That Resembles Mitch McConnell’s

When it comes back as the McConnell-Obama bill with the GOP’s blessing they won’t need his vote any more, however, so now he can shake his fist in defiance.

I rest my case.

The Hill has an article on the Progressive Caucus strategy for dealing with cap & trade.  It leaves the reader to infer quite a bit, so I thought I would helpfully translate. Liberal House Democrats are shifting their political tactics on climate change after failing to secure a public option in the new healthcare reform [...]

Matt Yglesias analyzes the “failure of the progressive block strategy,” and chalks it up to progressives not picking issues that “centrists” care about. He doesn’t note his own role in that failure, vilifying the leader of the progressive block Raul Grijalva as “the world’s greatest monster” unless he backs down. (Our own whip effort started [...]

Woolsey has become a major impediment to effective action on the issues she cares about the most. The failure of progressives in the House to achieve meaningful concessions on single payer, or the public option, or prescription drug price negotiation, or any other progressive principle is largely due to her ineffectiveness. She should step down as the co-chair of the Progressive Caucus.

For reasons I can’t quite fathom, President Obama has spent a huge amount of time and effort during the health care debate trying to integrate Republican ideas into the health care reform bill while constantly ignoring members of his own party. While this would make sense if Obama knew he would get Republican votes by [...]

We won this round. The White House/Baucus bill is DOA.

Now it’s time to return to the task of passing real health care reform. And this morning in the Houuse, Chellee Pingree and Jared Polis are pushing the Senate to reconsider the public option.

But that’s only happening because Raul Grijalva stood strong. Please say thanks by donating to his campaign, because you know PhRMA won’t.

FDL Activist Patrick from Arizona called Rep. Raúl Grijalva’s office and confirmed that Rep. Grijalva (AZ-07) will not vote for the Senate health care bill.  From Patrick’s report: I called and added personality to the script so it didn’t sound like I was reading verbatim.  Representative Grijalva will be voting AGAINST the Senate Health Care Bill. More [...]

Here’s the email we just sent to FDL activists with an emergency petition to House progressives. We’ll deliver it to Rep. Raul Grijalva, the leader of House Progressives, early next week. Click here to sign the petition.

We thank Representative Grijalva for his strong leadership throughout this fight. If Nancy Pelosi tries to pass a bill without a public option, we will be thanking him and those who stick by him with a fundraiser and GOTV efforts in their districts during the next election.

For those who decide that it’s in the best interest of their communities to vote for a bill that has insurance lobbyists crowing “we win,” we’ll be recruiting and supporting challengers against them who embrace Medicare for All.

They can’t represent WellPoint to the detriment of their constituents and hold a strong Democratic seat uncontested.

Senators Snowe, Lincoln, and Landrieu are teaming up on an amendment that would effectively gut state regulation of insurance coverage. The first actual votes on amendments to health care reform in the Senate took place today (with more interesting ones to follow). The fact that Snowe and Collins voted with Democrats indicates their votes maybe [...]