You're a fool, and you're the kind of fool that is doing great damage to Democrats and the progressive agenda.

I'm watching the debate. All the Democrats I most trust - Barney Frank, Maxine Waters, Nancy Pelosi etc. - are behind this thing. The opponents are a bunch of Republican ideologues, who are obviously convinced that the buy-in plan is going to work and that it's success will put the final nails in the coffin of the Reagan Revolution. They would rather crash the credit markets and the economy, and see massive job loss, small business failures, foreclosures and blighted college dreams, than see the federal government step in to save the economy. They are terrified that this buy-in plan will forever put the lie to the idea that the private economy is self-regulating and self-sustaining.

What will really tie Obama's hands in the next administration is if the radical Republicans get their way, and they allow the financial system to freeze up and dramatically contract economic activity out of fanatical ideological devotion to Reaganism. If economic activity collapses, there won't be any money around for anything. I find it incredible that so many Democrats have allowed themselves to be suckered in to make common cause with Reagan Republicans on this issue.

The Democrats in Congress have stepped up, and shown great statesmanship and political courage. They have had to show courage because they will have to deal with fools like you in the political arena and at the polling places in November. But I'm damn proud of my party. I'm proud of Frank, Dodd and Pelosi. And I'm tired of you pseudo-progressive, economically illiterate populist nitwits running around with your pitch forks, running down responsible leaders and undermining the progressive future.

This plan is going to work, and restore confidence and boost markets, and those who showed the courage needed to resist the rabble-rousing blather of people like you will have the honor of having helped save our economy from a profoundly deep downturn. Democrats can then make these points, which we should all begin making now:

1. Unlike the do-nothing radical Republicans in the House, responsible Democratic leaders acted promptly to pass a bailout plan that saved the country from a very deep recession and possible depression.

2. They did not simply accept the Bush/Paulson plan that was brought to them, but used their legislative muscle to insert protections for homeowners, executive salary provisions, equity purchase provisions and back-end protections that gave the country a much better plan. And they did this fairly quickly.

3. John McCain almost wrecked the passage of the plan, and almost sabotaged global confidence in the ability of the US government to act promptly in a financial crisis, by engaging in a reckless display of political grandstanding, and by interceding with House Republicans after an agreement was nearly in place last Thursday to stall the plan in the nation's hour of need, and hold it hostage to electoral politics. In the debate he was still preaching the dead-end doctrines of radical Reaganism.

4. Republicans in the House are extremist ideologues, who care more about their fealty to their dead god Ronald Reagan than they care about their obligations to the American people.