O.K. What is the Baucus Lesson?

"Baucus Offers Health Plan

but Lacks G.O.P. Support"

This is a headline from this report in The New York Times this morning. The lesson, Max, is that you can spend months and months cravenly trying to 'moderate' a policy proposal - to the point that is will leave all established players un-harmed and not mitigate the actual problem that, say, millions of citizens lack access to health care - and the Republicans will let you dangle in the wind. Bi-partisanship is a fool's game. It is a recipe for anemic policy. And it is, as I've argued here before, dangerous to democracy.