Via Volokh and Hotair comes the line that seems to sum up the problem with the current Democratic leadership and White House approach to health care:

Why are you guys trying to stuff a health care bill down our throat in three or four weeks when the President took six months to pick out a dog for his kids? — Unidentified tea partier to Steny Hoyer

It really is the rush to judgment that smells bad in this process. Why not take the time to have a full debate and a full assessment of potential problems before the government takes control of 20% of the economy?

Democrats feel that the rush is justified by the need to do something to provide coverage to 47 million uninsured people before what they see as demagogues and corrupt special interests gin up a movement opposing “socialized” health care. And there is certainly some demagogues on the right that are trying to play those cards and concoct a reprise of the 1994 health care reform debacle that struck a devastating blow against the last Democratic President. But their transparent desire to rush the debate and to disparage and malign anyone who dares raise the slightest question about cost, efficacy, or unintended side effects like equipment underinvestment and waiting lists is winding up causing backlash faster than they can put it down. One of the most powerful appeals that anti-reform protesters have is the ability to point to the fact that no one has even been able to yet read the bill that Democrats want to ram through, and that in and of itself raises legitimate suspicions about what might have been smuggled into the bill.

In order to succeed in addressing real problems in the U.S. health care system, Democrats needs to learn a virtue that is seemingly quite foreign to their idealistic and youthful base long frustrated with being out of power — patience. If they take the time to actually address legitimate concerns and, more importantly, be seen doing so, reform advocates have a much better chance of getting at least some reforms passed.

Of course, if they continue to try to force the issue, Democrats will be shooting themselves in the foot. It is too late to pre-empt the rise of a protest movement and it is likely also too late to succeed in the latest defensive tactic of trying to convince undecided voters that all the critics are nothing but a bunch of crazies. Unless reform advocates are willing to compromise on both style and substance, health care reform will once again be kicked down the road to plague us again, when the problems have only grown larger and the politics more intractable.