democrat_donkey_logo-240x30072 percent of respondents in a recent poll said they support a public plan option for health care reform, while 65 percent support a more radical (and effective) option: single-payer national health insurance. Yet Dianne Feinstein warns that Senate Democrats cannot muster the votes for the public plan option. It has been decades since a party has enjoyed as much real and perceived power as Democrats do today, yet our party seems imprisoned in an invisible cell.

I’m convinced that today’s generation of party elders has been hopelessly scarred by their experiences getting pummeled by Ronald Reagan and have become unalterably convinced that America is an irretrievably conservative nation. The thorough discrediting of conservative ideology and the ample evidence of a seismic shift in public attitudes have done nothing to shift this view.

So the leaders of the most powerful political party in America are jumping at shadows, so convinced that their constituents are ready to lynch them for serving their interests that they cannot hear them demanding just that.

It’s time for Democrats to stop being afraid to be Democrats and to recognize that for every vested interest is the making of a broad coalition to defeat it in the struggle for America’s future.