Joan Walsh: This is Garbage That Obama Bowed to his Left on the Health Care Bill.

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Joan Walsh does very well here in tackling the nonsensical Republican argument that Obama has been bending over backwards to please the left.

WALSH: You know, I`m not sure it is but I do want to say I`ve spent the last week, Chris, saying, Martha Coakley ran a bad campaign, but we really do have to look at what this means for Democrats. And I think that`s the first and foremost thing that it means is that President Obama has simply not led.

He let the Republicans run this health care agenda. People want to blame Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi? He turned it over to the Senate`s Finance Committee, he gave Republicans their marching orders, he gave them rope to hang him and that`s what they did. That`s why we`re still talking about this a year after his inauguration.

MATTHEWS: So he`s been ineffective?

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: He`s been an effective progressive?

WALSH: Oh, please, don`t set me off today, Chris. I know you`re feisty. I`m really feisty. That`s the one thing I will be here to say.

This is garbage that he bowed to his left. This is a corporate bill with corporate giveaways that the left is pissed about. That`s the problem with it. And I`ll finish Howard Dean`s sentence. One more thing. Howard Dean was trying to say -- I don`t agree with him on everything. Martha Coakley lost the progressives because nobody cares that she`s for the public option. That is dead and gone because the President didn`t fight for it.

So the idea that he went too far to this left is simply, factually wrong.

The Republicans are attempting, as they always do, to prove that the election result in Massachusetts somehow validates their opinion on healthcare and that the country is as right wing as they are on this subject. To that end they are fashioning the argument that Obama has angered voters by leaning too far to the left.

Opinion polls do not back that theory up. And, anyone following this will realise that, far from bending over to please the left, Obama bent over backwards to accommodate Leiberman and the Blue Dogs.

So this Republican argument is, as Walsh argues here, simply factually wrong.

Tags: Hardball, Joan Walsh, Obama, universal healthcare