Congressperson Joe ‘You Lie’ Wilson was hard hit this week while the POTUS effectively got away with snubbing women and undocumented immigrants in his health care speech.

But even after his re-election opponent, Rob Miller, raised a million due to the outcry and an apology to President Obama, Wilson seems to have won. Today, Democrats Max Baucus and Kent Conrad delivered a more anti-immigrant bill health care bill on a silver platter with costly eligibility verification that threatens to exclude more than just undocumented immigrants.

(Which U.S. citizens cannot provide proper government documentation? The first people to be affected by verification procedures is the Trans community. Oppressing against a particular group is often the slippery slope for oppression against other groups).

John Aravosis at America Blog cannot fathom why Democrats are on the defensive. He writes:

Why would anyone think that Wilson, or any of the extremists he represents, will support Baucus and Conrad’s plan, regardless of the changes? […]Wilson is holding firm. Perhaps Conrad and Baucus can delete women from the bill too, or gays, or blacks. That might finally get Wilson on board.

And Aravosis is right. Why is the Democrat party pandering to right-wing paranoia in the name of facts?

Organizations like NCLR would rather concentrate on the low-hanging fruit: demand rights for legal immigrants and their children in a brand new press release rather than take a strong stance against the anti-immigrant fervor that is apparent from Obama’s problematic dehumanizing of undocumented immigrants to Joe Wilson’s ‘You Lie.’ Is ceding so much ground in the immigration debate really the way forward?

Cutting through the anti-immigrant noise on health care insurance reform, it really costs more to exclude than include. Lindsay Beyestein at In these Times writes that the more premium-paying members, the cheaper the insurance plan.

Bottom-line: It just makes economic sense to include everyone. Excluding anyone, much less undocumented immigrants, makes little moral or economic sense.