Now They Just Sound Pathetic.

"Republicans", you might ask? No, the Senate bill's bloggy defenders, who are now reduced to calling House Progressives "monsters".

No, I'm not making this up. Yglesias actually said that. House progressives are not particularly receptive to the whole "pass the Senate bill or health care dies forever" argument, and aren't willing to roll over for the Senate, so apparently that makes them "monsters". Not Lieberman. Not the Republicans. Not the voters who—largely because they think the Democrat Senate is a hill of crap—rejected the Dem's chosen candidate in Mass. and will probably react very poorly to an attempt to ram this thing through. It's the progressives, somehow, that are the "monsters". Because, unlike Yglesias et al, there's a line they won't cross.

HCR's defenders get really oversensitive to the comparison, but this is exactly what happened with Iraq. Liberal "hawks" and neoconservatives spent enormous time and energy defending the idea of the war and its necessity. When it went bottoms-up, they responded to the (entirely justified) criticism of their enormous mistake by absolutely losing their minds. They called the war's progressive critics traitors, communists, hippies—and, yes, "monsters". And now that the Senate's perverse legislation is likely doomed, what happens? They're losing their minds, again, and the namecalling begins anew.

Yes, it's pathetic. It was pathetic with Iraq, and it's pathetic now. Not even so much because it's wrong, but because they just don't want to admit they lost. Yes, they're losers, as firmly rejected by the electorate as the Bush agenda was in 2006. Somewhere deep down, they probably know that they deserved to lose. They can't stand that. So they lash out, and stink of fear and desperation in doing so.

And in that fear and desperation, they have also finally answered that question I posed to the defenders months ago. You may remember it:

Is there a line? If there were a bill called "health care reform" that consisted solely of "everybody tithes 10% of their money to Rupert Murdoch", would they still support it? If THAT were all that Joe Lieberman, Nelson et al were willing to vote for, would Rahm head on down to Reid's office and harass them to pass the Health Care/Buying Rupert Murdoch Big Yachts Act of 2009?

Yglesias just showed that the answer is "no". There's no line. There never was. The Buying Big Yachts Act of 2009 would be perfectly acceptable. Anything with the name "health care" on it would be acceptable. Anything that makes Matt Yglesias and the rest feel like winners, instead of losers, is acceptable.

And if you don't support it?

You're a MONSTER.

Edit: Some of Matt's commentators are defending his post for being "sarcastic". Bull. He's dressing up a serious point in quasi-sarcasm. It's "Ha Ha Only Serious".