Running on Empty "Mainly because there's still no healthcare plan."

Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich on How to Fight Health Care Fearmongers and Demagogues goes a long way in explaining why the Democrats can't sell Obamacare. [Bolding mine.]

Why are these meetings brimming with so much anger? Because Republican Astroturfers have joined the same old right-wing broadcast demagogues that have been spewing hate and fear for years, to create a tempest.

But why are they getting away with it? Why aren't progressives—indeed, why aren't ordinary citizens taking the meetings back?

Mainly because there's still no healthcare plan. All we have are some initial markups from several congressional committees, which differ from one another in significant ways. The White House's is waiting to see what emerges from the House and Senate before insisting on what it wants, maybe in conference committee.

EXCUSE ME, but isn't that what the fearmongers and demagogues protesters are saying?

They are right to vociferously object to some vague and undefined plan. He has his own complaints. In his own blog, Reich objects to the White House deal with the pharmaceutical industry.

Let me remind you: Any bonanza for the drug industry means higher health-care costs for the rest of us, which is one reason why critics of the emerging healthcare plans, including the Congressional Budget Office, are so worried about their failure to adequately stem future healthcare costs."

He concludes: "We're on a precarious road -- and wherever it leads, it's not toward democracy."

We could have told him that.