DFL activist/analyst Bob Meek, one of the keepers of the flame of what he unabashedly calls Hubert Humphrey liberalism, seems to think that, in the current moment in the health care debate, we can benefit from these words of Sen. Humphrey, spoken to Minnesota AFL-CIO meeting in 1977, as Humphrey was dying of cancer (Meek is circulating the quote to his email list).

Humphrey: "You go bankrupt in wars.  No nation ever lost its life trying to save life.  You lose your life when you take life, and I ask the labor movement to really, once again, become the idealistic conscience of American politics.

Too many people in politics today are afraid.  They are afraid, they say, 'Oh, they won't go for this.'  Well, I knew they wouldn't go for civil rights in 1948. I knew they wouldn't go for Medicare in 1949. I knew they wouldn't go for the Peace Corps in 1958. and I knew they wouldn't go, if you please, for the arms control and disarmament agency in 1959, but ultimately, they did.

If you are going to be in politics, you have to be a soldier in the battlefield.  You know there are risks, there is no guarantee of your life, but as somebody once said, I would rather live fifty years like a tiger than a hundred years like a chicken."