As the saying goes, "With friends like these, who needs enemies?" Sometimes, cliché though it sounds, a cliché is just what's needed to express a sentiment. And so it goes in the beleaguered relationship between the Democratic Party and grassroots progressive organizations.
Last week, the particularly beleaguered Harry Reid tacked an amendment onto a jobs and education bill that would expand funding for teachers and increase federal matching funds for state Medicaid expenses but would pay for the spending by cutting food stamps. The bill, with the amendment in tact, achieved cloture this morning --- meaning that enough Senators voted to stop debating the bill and move forward to actually vote yeah or nay on the legislation.
But for once, the most interesting aspect of this legislation is not the horse trading to win a single Republican vote in a barely Democratic Senate. What's most interesting is the contours of the corner into which Democrats backed progressive advocates
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