Throughout the convention, ads for DividedWeFail.org and HarryAndLouiseReturn.com have been running on Comedy Central (and probably elsewhere, but I've been watching all my actual convention coverage on C-SPAN and PBS). These ads, respectively, admonish viewers to "demand action" on health care and tell the next president to "make it happen."

The balls it takes for the actors from the original Harry and Louise ads, and some of their original sponsors, to reprise this foolishness would make Stephen Colbert jealous. The ads that ran in 1993 were integral to killing the Clinton health care plan, and they salted the earth in their wake. Their scare-mongering then led directly to the problems they cite in the new ads now.

DividedWeFail.org's ads are, if anything, stupider and more simplistic. They're being run by the AARP, fresh off getting played by the Bush Adminstration on the Medicare Part D bill. Not surprisingly, they show the same kind of political acumen as John McCain, who's suggested the best solution to the Iraq War is to "sit the Shiites and the Sunnis down and say, ‘Stop the bullshit.’"

Guess what, you schmucks. Republicans don't want a government health care solution, and they don't particularly care about pushing the private sector into doing anything that might cost them money. This is simply not something that there is a bipartisan consensus for. On top of that, health insurance companies will fight for their very existence against real health care reform. If you want something to be done about the number of uninsured, underinsured and "insured" who can't actually get care, you need to elect more and better Democrats. You need to create a mandate for a health care reform that doesn't strengthen the profit motive. The obstacle to this is not "partisan bickering," it is Republicans.

Barack Obama gave his first partisan speech of the campaign tonight (making Mark Warner's horrible keynote all the odder), and I hope it's a prelude to him campaigning with the convention's other partisan warriors (more Bill Richardson, please) and for other Democrats (Oregon Senate candidate Jeff Merkley, Washington House candidate Darcy Burner, Connecticut House candidate Jim Himes, etc.). I think Obama has finally come to realize that whatever his movement is now, it can't survive outside the womb of the campaign without folding into the party. It will soon become apparent to a lot of people that Barack Obama's election is not America's redemption; rather, America's redemption can come from Obama's administration, and what he can accomplish with a strong Democratic Congress.