Public Not Ready to Give Up on Healthcare

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The Washington Post reports today that both liberals and conservatives are in favor of compromise on healthcare — as long as the other guys are the ones doing the compromising. It’s a start! The results aren’t quite even, though:

But even Republicans are critical of their congressional leadership, with 44 percent seeing them as doing too little to strike deals with Obama; that compares with just 13 percent of Democrats worried about inaction on Obama’s part.

That’s something to work with. The Fox News wing of the Republican Party obviously isn’t in the mood for compromise, but this is a reminder that there’s still a quieter, non-Fox wing that would like to see some things get done. And as the chart on the right shows, 63% of the country thinks “lawmakers in Washington” should keep trying to pass comprehensive healthcare reform, including 42% of Republicans and a firm majority of independents. It’s not clear what all these people think they’re signing up to when they say they want “comprehensive” reform, but that’s still a pretty healthy level of support. At the very least it should help stiffen a few Democratic spines in Congress.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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