Somebody has forwarded me this annoying round-robin from MoveOn.org, urging me to “protest the protestors” at an Obama-led healthcare debate tomorrow.

Dear MoveOn member,

Everyone who wants to see real health care reform this year needs to come out in force tomorrow in Washington, D.C.

President Obama is holding a virtual health care forum live from the DNC building—and right-wing groups are mobilizing to protest. With the president there in person and the national media watching, we need a huge show of progressive support for real health care reform—including a strong public health insurance option.

This is an urgent, all-hands-on-deck moment. Can you make it? Everyone is gathering at New Jersey Ave. and D St. tomorrow afternoon at 12:30 p.m.

There’s tremendous support for the public health insurance option—from Americans nationwide,1,2 from a powerful bloc of members in the House,3 and from progressive leaders in the Senate.4

But the public option is the No. 1 target of the Right and their big insurance backers, and they and their industry-funded mobs are putting serious resources into killing real reform.

We know President Obama wants a public health insurance option—as he has said many times, it’s the best way to lower costs, expand coverage, and keep the insurance companies honest.

But in order to make sure it happens, he’s got to know the American people have his back—that we’re fired up and ready to go to the mat for this critical piece of reform. We have to show him that if he keeps fighting for it, we’ll be right there with him.

Isn’t that message a bit frightening? It’s the combination of Lefty bossiness and slavish Obamaphilia — “we’ll be right there with him” — that disturbs; the implication that supporters of healthcare reform must serve as sort of citizen police force to protect the president. He cannot be heckled on TV! We must show him our love!

MoveON tries to use the incendiary language of radicalism—“the Right and their big insurance backers”—but it rings false. Aren’t they the ones standing up for the government and trying to silence dissent?

Of course, the townhall mobs on the Right are pretty grim, too, with their Pavlovian howls against “socialism” and their self-righteous outrage. But give me a choice between them and the preachy self-appointed guardians of Obamacare, and I’d take the right-wing crazies every time. Move off!