… if your concern is about the corruption of our public policy process, wouldn’t it make sense to focus your energy on pressuring republicans and conversatives to engage in a constructive manner with public policy then on liberals for proposing liberal ideas?

Yes, it would make sense. But don’t I do that?

As to health care: if “universal coverage” means a mandate, then I think it’s something that I should be opposed. But I agree entirely that Republican opposition to cutting Medicare costs has been stupidly counterproductive.

In addition to this institutional bias towards the status quo, you also have this: public policy is complex, difficult, and in many cases boring. The public knows little to nothing about policy and cares even less about it. Thus, with few exception, policy making is made by stakeholders and elites, not the public.

And so I come to this debate in a bipartisan manner. I think Kevin Drum et al and you and Tyler Cowen are both right. Its true that public policy formulated by liberals needs to account for the sausage making nature of congress. But in parallel to that, an intrinsic component to the nastiness of that sausage is lock step opposition of a minority who fails to engage in constructive dialogue. A key reason why policy that simultaneously favors special interests (corporate and otherwise) at the expense of the public interest, conservative and liberal values, stems from Republicans failure to offer anything aside from “UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE IS SOCIALISM” and “GLOBAL WARMING DOESN’T EXIST AND IF IT DOES ITS NOT A PROBLEM.”

So here’s my question to you: if your concern is about the corruption of our public policy process, wouldn’t it make sense to focus your energy on pressuring republicans and conversatives to engage in a constructive manner with public policy then on liberals for proposing liberal ideas? Bruce Bartlett is an excellent example of that.

For example, with the health care debate, Democrats would clearly be willing to sell their mothers in slavery, if Republicans would be willing to extend universal coverage to the population. In other words, Republicans could have demanded painful cost cutting concessions in return for universal coverage. Instead, we will get an expansion of coverage to more people, but not all, while simultaneously making the health care system more costly. Now as a liberal, I’d rather have the coverage and cost cutting, but if I can’t get the cost cutting then I am going to take the universal coverage, cost cutting be damned.