He’s regaining his sanity, get this man more Kool-aid, Stat!:

While the Daily Kos diary in question is specifically arguing that the Cooper plan was great (although that is implied), it does take as its main point that health care reform failed in 1993-1994 because Democrats, specifically Hillary Clinton, weren’t nice enough to conservatives. If only Hillary Clinton had been nicer to conservatives, then we could have had great health care plans like Jim Cooper’s. Hell, Jim Cooper himself says so. And look, David Brooks agrees, so it much be right.

This is a very disturbing argument. The moment when dislike of Hillary Clinton is combined with calls for Democrats to compromise in the manner of Jim Cooper, and it is all justified by citing David Brooks, is a moment when I really fear for the internal logic of some Barack Obama support. It is the moment when I fear we all become practioners of High Broderism: mean, left-wing Democrats, especially Hillary Clinton, are holding up reasonable compromises on Social Security, Iraq, FISA, torture, bankruptcy protection, global warming, etc. It is an argument I heard for years from the national media, long before the primary campaign began. To now be hearing it in the top recommended dairy at Daily Kos bothers me quite a bit.

Who is Cooper? Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn) is a “blue-dog” Democrat and Bush enabler. Cooper told the Memphis Daily News that health care reform failed in 1993-1994 because Hillary Clinton was too mean to him. Some Cheetopia diarist picked it up and it became a most recommended diary yesterday.

Cooper is also cited as evidence that Hillary is ruthless and vindictive. It seems that Cooper had a competing bill (similar to Obama’s current health-care reform proposal) that undercut Hillary’s plan:

“They turned up their nose at my bill, and that’s fine. But then they constructed this secret 500-person task force to draft a whole new bill - and I knew it would go nowhere,” Cooper said. “So I went privately to the White House to warn (Hillary Clinton). No publicity. No nothing.

“She brought in a camera to record the meeting. And she has not released the memos on this meeting. She immediately declared war on me. I warned her we didn’t even have the votes (for her bill) in our subcommittee. She said, ’We’re going to (politically) cut your legs off.’ I’ve never gotten such a cold reception as I got from her.”

Team Clinton then set up a war room to go against him and defeat his Senate bid in 1994. He says they hired a former Nashville reporter to head the war room. But during this time, President Clinton was as nice as he could be to Rep. Cooper, playing golf with him, running with him, and asking him to hang out at the White House.

Poor fellow, how terrible, right?

From Wikipedia:

In 1994, Cooper ran for the United States Senate for the seat left open when Al Gore was elected Vice President, but was defeated by Republican attorney and actor Fred Thompson, receiving just under 40% of the vote. It was a bad night overall for Democrats in Tennessee, as Republicans captured Tennessee’s other Senate seat (in the person of Bill Frist) as well as the governorship. Cooper then moved to Nashville and entered private business, also serving as a professor at Vanderbilt University’s Owen Graduate School of Management.

So somehow the Clintons engineered the entire 1994 GOP takeover of Congress just to take revenge on Jim Cooper?

Healthcare reform was Bill Clinton’s key domestic policy plank in 1992, and after the election Hillary chaired the healthcare reform taskforce. All this was very public information. The Democratic Congress failed to support the resulting proposal, and millions of dollars were spent to defeat it, including the Harry and Louise spots resurrected by Obama.

According to Cooper, healthcare reform failed because Hillary was mean. And it must be true, because David Brooks says so. By the way, Cooper has since returned to Congress, where he typically votes slightly to the right of Atilla the Hun.

On the bright side, Chris Bowers is showing signs of returning sanity. He’s beginning to realize the absurdity of some of the OFB. But then he relapses and he finishes with this:

If there is a short-term solution to this, it should be that more Obama supporters online should start practicing what Obama himself preaches. Rather than continuing to focus attention to Bush Dog attacks on Hillary Clinton, perhaps it is time to actually start reaching out to Clinton supporters themselves. This would seem particularly wise, given that the outcome of the nomination campaign isn’t actually in doubt anymore. Perhaps people are still engaging in primary flame wars out of some sort of reflex motion, given that we have been doing it for so long now. However, at a time when we need to start unifying the party, doesn’t it seem slightly contradictory to be attacking the losing candidate for not being better at outreach and forging consensus? Rather than praising the like of right-wing Jim Cooper for continuing primary season attacks at a time when the outcome of the nomination campaign is no longer in doubt, maybe it is time we start reaching across our own aisle. I mean, isn’t Obama’s ability to reach across the aisle one of the things that is supposed to make him so great, anyway?

Sigh.