To make matters infinitely worse, we are seeing tactics employed by our opponents nationwide that are utterly antithetical to the very concept of representative govt. Shouting down someone who's trying to describe what happened when a family member got cancer is not only incredibly bad manners, it's an overt acknowledgement of the fact that you have no respect for the experiences or the views of your political opponents. Add in the hangings in effigy, the Limbaugh Nazi allusions, and the "lynching" comment, and you begin to understand the depth of the depravity at work here.

How is our party "leadership" reacting to this low-intensity insurrection? Well, according to today's NYT, they offer the following bon mot:

President Obama, underscoring his call for a bipartisan bill, invited a group of six negotiators on the Finance Committee — three Democrats and three Republicans — to meet with him at the White House on Thursday. Even as debate begins to heat up around the country, that bipartisan group has continued to slog its way through complex sections of the bill. Mr. Bayh said he was eager to see what the group put forward to bridge outstanding differences. But he was pleased enough with what he heard at the Democratic caucus meeting on Wednesday that he chimed in with a rare comment, suggesting that many of the proposals could win the 60 votes typically needed to pass legislation in the Senate.

Bayh and his soulmate Sen. Conrad offered more legislative wisdom:

"Let’s not lose sight of the historic advancements that we all agree we can make," he said, "starting with eliminating pre-existing conditions as a reason for people not getting insurance, no lifetime caps so if you get a catastrophic illness you are not going to lose your coverage." Mr. Bayh also cited an expansion of Medicaid, subsidies to help working families buy insurance, incentives for small businesses to provide insurance to employees and the closing of a gap in Medicare drug coverage — all of them provisions "I strongly support," he said, "and you’d get 60 votes for those right now." Lawmakers said Mr. Baucus and another Democratic negotiator on the Finance Committee, Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota, had told them that the Republican negotiators seemed sincere in seeking a deal.

W/ all due respect, Sen. Conrad, if you see "sincerity" on the GOP side, there are thousands of acres of Everglades not too far from me that you could probably buy for a bargain price. W/ all due respect to Sen. Bayh, if your goal is 60 votes, stop pretending that you have any interest in really reforming a thoroughly rotten and corrupt health care system. You'll save a whole lot of controversy, and you'll save a whole lot of activists a whole lot of effort if you openly admit that all you want to do is to tinker around the edges.

The one positive I see about these events is that they're making tinkering around the edges an increasingly less viable alternative. In 1861, Lincoln's sole goal was the restoration of the antebellum status quo ante. By 1863, events had forced Lincoln to seek far more sweeping goals.

Perhaps events will similarly force Obama's hand now. When you keep extending an olive branch to people, and they continually reply by spitting in your face, at some point, you put the olive branch away. It's time to put the olive branch away here and start reminding the GOP that elections have consequences.

UPDATE--I greatly appreciated the contributions below from those who addressed the reconciliation issue in some detail. As I see it, we clearly have the necessary House votes, and the only remaining question is getting 60 votes to avoid a Senate filibuster. Since we have (in theory) 60 Senate Dems, filibuster shouldn't be an issue.

If filibuster is a problem, it has an easy solution. There are 2 current GOP senators who voted for the Stim. They're from the same small state, and 1 of them (Snowe) has expressed flexibility on the public option. Meet w/ them privately, and offer them the sun, the moon and the stars for ME. Give them roads, bridges, more ships to build at Bath Iron Works, whatever they want.

All you need to do is to cut a deal w/ 2 senators in order to guarantee passage of health care. Instead, Baucus and Conrad are screwing around w/ Grassley and Enzi on a total fool's errand. Meanwhile, the teabaggers are derailing democracy and making the Dems look besieged and ineffective.

Sometimes, the stupidity of it all is appalling.

UPDATE 2--Upon further reflection, tonight's events make it clear that the issue has gone well beyond the success or failure of HCR. What's at stake now is the core concept of govt by the people, of the people, and for the people.

In 2000, a vociferous minority, w/ the help of 5 Supremes, managed to steal a presidential election. Now, an even more vociferous minority is trying to hijack the results of the 2008 election. Obama obtained the highest popular vote total of any candidate in 20 years, and his party was swept in w/ commanding majorities in both houses.

The freepers and the teabaggers don't care. They openly challenge the legitimacy of Obama taking office. They distort and dissemble about his legislative agenda. They consciously choose to disrupt town meetings that are the essence of American democracy.

The main difference between the teabaggers now and the Confederates in the 1860s is that the teabaggers have yet to take up arms against a lawfully elected federal government. If they're not thwarted soon, they may cause incalculable damage to the body politic.