Ezra Klein, Naderite
January 21, 2010
Ezra Klein is pissed. He has been a leading voice on the center-left for passing the less-than-perfect health care reform package that has come out of Congress, but is now calling for Democratic voters to stay home in November if the White House and the Congressional leadership do not make health care reform happen, and pronto.
Klein: "My basic position is that politics is a marketplace like any other, and preferences need to be known. If Democrats decide to drop something this important to the lives of hundreds of thousands of human beings because they lost a special election in Massachusetts, they should be punished in the sole way this marketplace allows."
Klein again: "We all agree that there is some point at which the base should abandon the party, at least for a single election cycle."
There is plenty of time before November for the Obama administration to win back Klein and others who have gone out on a limb to defend an important, if deeply flawed, reform. But, man, you know Obama is in a bad place when Ezra Klein is organizing a "Nader for Congress 2010" campaign, and health care reform is what drove him to it.