The New York Daily News, generally a left-wing publication, is joining today with fellow left-wing publication The Seattle Times in calling for Democrats in the White House and Congress to abandon their current push for government-run health care.

You know things are bad when even left-wing news outlets are calling for Barack Obama to pull the plug on his big government initiatives.

Health reform: Down the stretch it comes. President Obama has gone so far as to postpone an overseas trip in a last-ditch push to get a comprehensive reform bill to his desk.

He shouldn’t waste his energy.

Not with unemployment justifiably the nation’s top concern and the possibility of a double-dip recession still looming. Remember how Obama said, in his State of the Union reboot, “Jobs must be our No. 1 focus in 2010?? Well, apparently he doesn’t.

Not with the American people abandoning the President’s prescription in huge numbers. Just one in four voters supports the reform bill as written; half want Congress to start over. Compare that with the popular support other major pieces of social legislation enjoyed before passage, like welfare reform (68%), Medicare (63%) and civil rights (60%).

Not with health care costs having risen 73% over the last decade – with Medicaid growing at 21% a year – and showing no signs of coming down to Earth. Controlling costs is the absolute, unconditional, a-blind-man-could-see-it prerequisite for expanding coverage.

Not with American health care quality actually quite impressive in many respects, including world-leading rates for patients surviving cancer and among the shortest wait times for hard-to-find treatments and surgeries.

Not with a half-dozen accounting gimmicks built into the legislation – including the fact that federal budget projections are based on 10 years worth of tax collections and just six years of spending increases.

Not with the Senate, lacking even a single Republican vote, having to resort to reconciliation, a little-used parliamentary maneuver, to get it through. Sure, it’s been used before – but not on anything that has such limited public support.

Not after all the cynical back room deals – deals Obama has committed to removing – having frayed the public trust. With legislation of this magnitude, that is not a renewable resource.

Yeah, backroom deals that provide special favors to members of Congress have a tendency to reduce public trust in legislation. And that’s even before we get into the Medicare cuts, government interference, and increased costs that come along with the current version of health care reform.

As the NY Daily News points out, just one in four Americans want to see this legislation passed. Democrats can’t even get enough votes in Congress to pass this crap, which is why they’re changing the rules by using reconciliation and the Slaughter Strategy. It’s so bad that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid can’t even get their own caucuses to support it.

Which doesn’t mean it won’t pass. Like I said, Democrats are busy changing the rules. If the House of Representatives continues on the course it’s on, using backroom deals and corrupt procedures, government-run health care could become law very soon. Like by next week.

Want to do something about it? Find your representative and tell him to oppose the legislation. If your representative already opposes the bill, find a representative who doesn’t and call him. Start here.