RYviewpoint

Maureen Dowd in her latest op-ed for the NY Times decides to crawl into the ring and tussle with the maniacs yelling about "socialism" in health care:

At his more placid town hall in Portsmouth, N.H., on Tuesday, the president had to explain that he did not intend to “pull the plug on grandma.” He said that the specter of death panels had spun out of a proposal from a Republican, Senator Johnny Isakson of Georgia, who has long espoused helping Medicare patients learn about options for care at the end of their lives. In an interview with The Washington Post on Monday, Isakson diagnosed Palin’s interpretation of his suggestion as “nuts.”

The young grass-roots army that swept Obama into office has yet to mobilize now that the fight is about something complicated rather than a charismatic hope-monger. No, they can’t?

Instead of a multicultural tableau of beaming young idealists on screen, we see ugly scenes of mostly older and white malcontents, disrupting forums where others have come to actually learn something. Instead of hope, we get swastikas, death threats and T-shirts proclaiming “Proud Member of the Mob.”

President Obama has proven quicksilver instincts, but not in this case. You would think that a politician schooled in community organizing and the foul balls of a presidential campaign would be ready to squash this kind of nuttiness. (Like it or not, Speaker Pelosi, that’s democracy in action.) Instead, the president’s overconfident Harvard Law Review side, expecting a high-minded debate, prevailed.

He knows how to rise to the occasion, even when others are in the dirt. But he may be running out of time.

She is right to jab Obama in the ribs and insist that he take charge of the issue. He has let the nutcases on the right drown out discourse and replace it with a contest to she who can drown out debate with the most idiotic slogans. Even high school politics wasn't this pathetic. What is Obama waiting for, Godot?