Apart from whether the President gets hurt politically, and even whether the real interests of the people in the area of HCR are served, there is the larger issue of restoring the Congress and the Senate as institutions. Today, the Senate needs a group of progressives like the liberal Senators of the ’50s and ’60s. It needs people who have the courage of their convictions, and who can negotiate successfully for what they believe in. But the problem is that jello progressives, like Jello Jay can’t do that. The reason is basic to the process of successful negotiation. In any such process, you have to be prepared to walk away from the table to get anything good at all. You have to be able to say “no.” When you lose something in negotiation, you have to be able to deny your negotiating partner something. You have to make that partner pay a price for the concession they denied to you. Jello Jay and his jello progressive colleagues can’t do that. They can’t say no. Until they can, every other party to the negotiations they take part in will roll them. It’s as simple as that. The old liberals were prepared to walk away. But Jello Progressivism says “yes,” no matter how much it loses in negotiation. Jello progressives are so afraid of failure that they always fail, even while they tell themselves they’ve accomplished something. That has to stop, or these progressives have to be replaced, because as things are now they are neither any good to us, nor to themselves.