Two good posts (there were many more) from Sullivan:

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/01/scott-browns-mindless-oped.html
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/01/how-popular-are-entitlements.html (which largely quotes another site)

The most striking observation from this post is:
“[H]ow has Brown been able to rally opposition to the health care bill? By complaining that it would lead to Medicare cuts and interfere with Massachusetts’ system. In other words, he has based his candidacy around defending old entitlements against new ones.”

Along those lines, a conservative I know has complained for months about how health care reform will be a disaster because “now the government’s going to tell me how to live my life.” For all his fear of future government takeovers of health insurance, he’s already covered by Medicare.

It’s another example of how the right is angry and completely incoherent all at once.

Beyond that, I’ll try to keep some additional points as succinct as possible (and fail utterly).

Here in Massachusetts there were NO ads in the recent Special Election between Scott Brown and Martha Coakley stressing the value of the Massachusetts healthcare plan, nor that Massachusetts was at risk of loosing it vis-a-vis Healthcare Reform writ large at the national level. That is something I can attest to. I do agree — fairly or not — that a lot of people have been made more broadly afraid of what they’ll supposedly loose, particularly the Elderly and the fear that’s been perpetuated with respect to Medicare. That message did appear in the Brown vs. Coakley race in Massachusetts, but it appeared with only the gusto of the national version of the same argument . . and it wasn’t much of a deciding factor in the race or the election result. (Everyone said ‘Economy’.)

If you’re from Massachusetts it would be interesting to hear whether you agree with the above.

Back to Healthcare Reform, I for one can say that if anyone were to even try to ‘pull the plug’ on my or anyone else’s Grandma (or my Father or my Mother now that they’re old enough) that they’d have to go through me first . . . and a lot of other, angry Americans, too.

But somehow the fabric of THAT reality — that we’d all defend Grandma tooth-and-nail — has been lost while we leave it to the current system and health insurance companies to do it more insidiously and subtlety . . each and every day. And it’s that and other misguided arguments that seem to have stymied progress on a problem we would both seem to agree needs solving.

You’re more than welcome to continue the discussion here on LittleDEM if you’d like.