(This is a piece I almost sold elsewhere, but it got kicked back. Thought I’d post it here so it wouldn’t go to waste. It’s a little stiffer than my blog stuff, but it does have a point if you can slog therogh the stuff you already know as a GMD and new media reader…)

Much is being said among the online media of the superior job being done by “Tea party” conservatives in turning out for, and dominating, the so-called “town hall meetings” Congressional Democrats are holding with constituents over the pending health care reform plans. The left has been slow to respond or counter the dramatic displays of defiance that have crossed the line to outright scary on more than one occasion.

Criticisms of the liberal counter-insurgent machinery have become more frequent, in particular suggestions that “Organizing for America,” the unofficial grassroots army that evolved from the Obama Presidential campaign has been slow or inefficient in its response. Recent polls would seem to bear out the notion that the left is being out-hustled in the persuasion and power game.

Although the unions and grassroots organization have come to life, and the dynamics of the town hall meetings are beginning to turn, no amount of organizing is going to change the fundamental disadvantage the left has in this arena, at this time. Simply, that the right wing crowds have something to rally behind – their pent-up loathing of President Obama.

The left, on the other hand, not been given much to fight for, and seems to have less by the day. The resultant passion gap is cavernous and growing.

Obama campaigned, as did all the Democratic candidates for President, on health care reform and providing something approaching universal access. Among most of left that provides the energy for political action, full universal healthcare (more often than not via some sort of single payer construction) is the issue that supersedes almost all other issues. In the face of polls suggesting a general public more amenable than one might expect to such a notion, it has been difficult to walk back those goals and work to promote a package of insurance reforms that would include a Medicaid-like “public option” that Americans could afford to buy into.

But even that more modest goalpost is looking as though it may be too much for the administration, which is frustrating activists to no end. Over the last few weeks, liberals have witnessed a legislative process largely taken out of the hands of those lawmakers who share their goals and given more and more exclusively by the administration to Senator Finance Chair and conservative Democrat Max Baucus, who may have previously shined on those activists (myself among them) committed to a public option to line up early support for his efforts, but who clearly has no intention of passing anything even that robust.

And now comes further proof of a deal between the pharmaceutical companies, Baucus, and the Obama administration, to protect (and further) pharma’s profits under any reform plan in exchange for their political and financial support for the ultimate bill. All of which stands in contradiction to promises Obama made while electioneering.

The self-defeating consequences of this sort of backroom politics on turning out activists to carry and advance the message should be self-evident – a passion gap. The angry right wing crowds know what they’re fighting against at these town hall meetings, while increasingly, their left-wing counterparts are left to wonder from each day to the next what they’re supposed to be fighting for.