As Swamp Yankee noted earlier today, the AFL-CIO is going all-in on the healthcare debate. Their plan, in their own words, is to “organize major union participation in Congressional Town Hall meetings.” Unlike the spontaneous rejection of socialism springing from our grassroots, Big Labor plans to service their symbiotes in government by putting up money, transportation, and talking points in order to influence the healthcare debate and, ultimately, shut you up.

There’s a word for that. I can’t think of it. Rhymes with mastro murfing I think.

Of course, also unlike the senior citizens Obamacare proponents happily smear as an unruly mob, big labor is absolutely ready to use intimidation and scare tactics to get their way. Hey, it’s what they do.

You may be wondering, though, whether they may have a good point. After all, if the unions exist for the purpose of advocating for the rights of workers, couldn’t their support of Obamacare be seen as part of that mandate? Um, could you please stop laughing? I’m going somewhere with this!

So OK, let’s have a look at just how well Big Labor takes care of “the little people” then, shall we?

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With well over half of America firmly in opposition to the Obama/Kennedy/Pelosi health overhaul plan, Democrats are grasping at anything they can possibly find to reassure themselves that they are still both right and representative of the “collective American will” on this and myriad other issues.

To that end, Jen O’Malley Dillon, executive director of the Democratic National Committee, sent an email to supporters this afternoon that is virtually dripping with desperation. Called “5 Facts About the Anti-Reform Mobs,” Dillon’s email is a frantic effort to reassure the shrinking, increasingly-fringe minority that actually support’s the President’s debt-growing and government-expanding programs that, against all evidence, they are the true majority on this issue and the opponents of their increasingly-unpopular proposals are an angry, paid, fringe “mob.”

Dillon wrote:

There’s been a lot of media coverage about organized mobs intimidating lawmakers, disrupting town halls, and silencing real discussion about the need for real health insurance reform.

The truth is, it’s a sham. These “grassroots protests” are being organized and largely paid for by Washington special interests and insurance companies who are desperate to block reform. They’re trying to use lies and fear to break the President and his agenda for change.

Health insurance reform is about our lives, our jobs, and our families — we can’t let distortions and intimidation get in the way. We need to expose these outrageous tactics, and we’re counting on you to help. Can you read these “5 facts about the anti-reform mobs,” then pass them along to your friends and family?

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As President Obama called on his activists around the country to attend “thousands of events this month” in an effort to convince legislators that they, not the 55% of voters who oppose the Obama/Kennedy/Pelosi health care overhaul proposals, represent the majority of Americans (or, as a DailyKos diarist put it, “the collective will of the American people”), the Democratic National Committee was releasing an ad decrying the Obamacare-opposing “mob” as a bunch of Limbaugh-loving, Bible-carrying, extremist “birther” sheeple.

The ad is below:

Interestingly, the same crowd that is currently spending time and money to organize a campaign denigrating the “mob’s” dissent spent the last 8 years proclaiming such “mob” actions to be the quintessential example of Constitutionally-protected, God-given Freedom of Speech. This includes the current President, who spent that time and the decades before it acting as a professional rabble-rousing astroturfer (something that makes his sensitivity to such tactics understandable, but his apparent inability to recognize real dissent and outrage, rather than its manufactured counterpart, more than a bit puzzling).

As Jim Geraghty wrote this morning in a post titled “When More Than Half Dislike Your Ideas, It’s More Than ‘The Right-Wing Base’“:

I think the DNC — and Democrats, and the Obama administration — are on the verge of making a serious error by dismissing folks who show up at constituent meetings as “the mob.” …Skepticism of this health care plan goes way, way beyond “the right wing Republican base.” Alternatively, the right wing Republican base now amounts to a bit more than half of the voting public. …In the face of numbers like these, what do Democrats gain from a message like this[?]

Beyond being a whiplash-inducing reversal of position from the last 8 years (remember Hillary Clinton screeching “WE HAVE THE RIGHT TO DEBATE AND DISAGREE WITH ANY ADMINISTRATION!”?), the left’s change of position on both free speech and community organizing has negated what they portrayed as President Obama’s strongest qualification for the office (which isn’t saying much, given his overall lack of qualifications): his experience as a community organizer.

Even more striking is the fact that those the DNC and Obama now insultingly claim are organizing and provoking the angry “mob” are, to use Obama campaign rhetoric from just last year, doing the same work Jesus did when He was on the earth.

It’s often striking to consider the swiftness of the people’s reversal on Jesus Himself, from a king’s entrance on Palm Sunday to condemnation and crucifixion just days later. With the Democrats’ sudden 180° on the actions of those they compared to Jesus just months ago, we have a living, current example of just how such a change can happen.