"Morning Joe" Scarborough is lending his name and commentary to the launch of a new group dedicated to...what, exactly? Via Huffington Post:

Scarborough, a Republican, former Florida congressman and host of "Morning Joe" on MSNBC, will participate in the debut event of "No Labels" on December 13 at Columbia University in New York.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is also expected to take part, along with an array of other self-described centrists, including retiring Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), Sen. Joe Lieberman, (I-Conn.), former Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.), Rep. Chris Shays (R-Conn), Los Angeles's Democratic Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Sen. Deb Stabenow (D-Mich.), former Gov. Christie Todd Whitman (R-N.J.) and former Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (R-N.Y.)

A look at the "About" page on NoLabels.org reveals a list of "Founding Leaders", including Dave Walker, David Frum, Mark McKinnon, and Clinton strategist Nancy Jacobson. By the way, that Dave Walker is the same David M. Walker who is head of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, that non-partisan group who helped write the Catfood Commission chairs' recommendations.

To give Frum, et al their due, they are not crazy like most Republicans. This is good. They should represent the conservative majority viewpoint, not the teabirchers and their birther buddies. With that said, this organization smells like a feel-good way to attract disaffected pieces of the electorate who don't really bother to learn enough to actually test what they believe in. It's more "no red state, no blue state" nonsense in an environment where bullies dominate the national conversation.

As for Morning Joe:

But he is teasingly vague about what he might consider doing on his own. He avoided a direct answer to the question earlier this month at Harvard, saying only: "There are so many issues where America is united... I think we're coming up on a very historic time. I'm very happy where I am right now, but you never know."

One thing Scarborough knows: he's outraged by Palin's attacks on the experience and bona fides of two Republican presidents, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. He indignantly called her out in a Politico website column. "This is one Republican," he wrote acidly," who would prefer that the former half-governor promote her reality shows and hawk her books without demeaning the reputations of Presidents Reagan and Bush."

Color me shocked.

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(h/t Heather)

I've been hearing from my sources that the ConservaDems in the House of Lords (The Senate) would rather have states be able to "opt in," rather than "opt out," of the public option in health-care reform. No matter how you feel about these proposals, the one Ben Nelson supports is a far, far worse plan than the other. Here's what he said on CNN's State of The Union:

KING: If there is a vote and Harry Reid needs 60, have you promised him, even if you disagree with the proposal and might vote no on the proposal, you would give him your vote on the procedural issue?

NELSON: I have made no promise. I can't decide about the procedural vote until I see the underlying bill. It would be, I think, reckless to say I'll support the procedure without knowing what the underlying bill consists of. And it's not put together yet. It's a draft -- it will be a draft bill some time next week, submitted the Congressional Budget Office for the review of the cost. And until I've seen a completed draft...

KING: Well, let me -- let me jump in, can you support...

NELSON: ... I'm not going to...

KING: Can you support a public option where states could opt out so there is a public option in the federal legislation, or will you only support a public option where the state would have to opt in, so there is not a national program already created?

NELSON: Well, I certainly am not excited about a public option where states would opt out or a robust, as they call it, robust government-run insurance plan. I'll take a look at the one where states could opt in if they make the decision themselves.

I understand what the other Senators are trying to do with the opt-out proposal -- which comes down to guaranteeing the public option an uphill, state-by-state battle -- but Ben Nelson in particular continually thwarts every effort to include a robust public option in America. I think he uses health insurance payoffs as a form of roughage to keep his bowels clear. And he still won't say if he'll give us an up-or-down vote. Schmuck.

Nelson must be looking to become a health insurance lobbyists once he leaves the Senate and since he takes the most cash from them---I imagine he has a gig already lined up.

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Now that progressives have licked their wounds from the 2010 Elections -- especially the 60 House seats won by Republicans -- it's time to turn our attention to the real task at hand: Getting a large chunk of those seats back.

And if there's anything we should have learned from 2010, it's this: The Blue Dog short-cut -- that is, propping up conservatives who don't really believe in progressive values at all as Democrats, simply as an easy way to put swing districts into Democratic hands -- is a short-term winner and a long-term disaster.

This was really on display Friday on Sean Hannity's Fox News show when he interviewed outgoing Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh, a classic Conservadem who thinks President Obama pushed a "liberal" agenda too hard.

HANNITY: Well, look, I would argue and I have argued that Bill Clinton changed after '94 and the Republican Revolution. I contend, and my analysis of President Obama is that he is a rigid, left wing, radical ideologue.

And I've said it many times on the program. I've never seen any inclination in his adult professional life that he has a willingness to be pragmatic to move to the middle to change.

Do you see that in him? Because I don't see it.

BAYH: Well, I actually do, Sean. And I'm glad you're sitting down when I say this. Believe it or not there are some people out there in my party who are attacking the president for being insufficiently liberal.

They think he didn't go far enough. Believe it or not, they're out there because I hear from them, too.

This kind of idiocy is exactly the reason Democrats lost so badly in the House, and had to concede seats like Bayh's in the Senate. Because -- Bayh's protestations to the contrary -- it's been painfully evident to everyone except the Tea Parters, Fox Talkers and Blue Dogs (that is, blinkered conservative ideologues) that the path Obama has followed has been anything BUT that of a "rigid, left wing, radical ideologue".

As John Nichols says, Bayh was a big part of Democrats' problem -- and his willingness to be a tool for Hannity to bash Democrats only hints at how deep that problem is.

Think about the two chief initiatives for which guys like Hannity and Bayh regularly attack Obama: the stimulus, and health-care reform. In each of these instances, Obama actually undercut his own efforts, particularly with his base, by scaling back and moderating the policies -- often to the point that, as with the stimulus package, it ultimately came up short (at least from an economic recovery standpoint) because it was so "moderate." Indeed, Obama bent over so far backwards on health-care reform that he essentially presented a Republican plan -- which Republicans, of course, unanimously rejected.

That's because Republicans really don't care about the nation's well-being: they only care about how right-wing conservatives fare politically. It didn't matter WHAT path Obama followed policy-wise: they were determined to portray him as a "rigid, left-wing, radical ideologue" no matter what he did or said. A REAL Democrat, instead of a fake one like Evan Bayh, would have pointed this out.

The reason they were able to turn this around with such ease, though, has less to do with the electorate's actual sentiments, and much more to do with the kind of Democrats who helped sweep to victory in 2006 and 2008 -- particularly those in rural and suburban swing districts.

Those people were actually elected on the basis of voters' disgust with misbegotten conservative rule -- even though they themselves were fundamentally conservative. So, rather than go out and build on their victories as Democrats by elucidating common-sense explanations for Democratic policies, these politicos essentially went out and acted like Republicans Lite, trying to convince people who would never vote for them. Along the way, as we observed in Walt Minnick's case, they gutted the own original supporters -- the common-sense liberals who are also part and parcel of rural and suburban communities, if in the minority:

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