Translation - Obama's political future is so wrapped up in signing a bill that effective healthcare reform represents a (distant) secondary consideration.

Over the last 2 weeks Obama has totally lost me, what with it becoming clear he intends to gut the Constitution just like Bush and has no intention of actually fighting for effective health care reform.

Fuck this "Republican support" shit! By now these guys should realize what a complete crock that is. The Republicans have ZERO interest in playing any constructive role. Rahm should be smart enough to realize that even if Conrad is too dim to.

Enough liberal Democratic Senators need to have the guts to tell Pres. Obama that they will not vote for a health plan without a public option.

Snark: Oh, since Pres. Obama is not wedded to the public option AND is open to new ideas, a single payer plan is back in play?

Bluebell open to alternatives in 2010, 2012...

I mean it's not that I don't have other issues I'm mad as hell about (FISA, Iraq, EFCA, financial (un)regulation, DODT...). After all, we do have something of a theme going here. But this is THE issue. This is THE issue that determines whether we have a major political party willing to represent the middle-class (and even the poor once a month or so). This is the last straw.

We all know that Emanuel's instincts run somewhat to the right of Obama's, and this wouldn't be the first time he has gotten ahead of himself with a statement that Obama has had to backtrack.

Right now, this is all posturing and talking. When Obama fails to veto a bill that doesn't include a public option, then I'll worry.

maybe now more people will see what i have been saying for weeks.

obama will not fight for anything!

if this is true and it falls right into the obama pattern of caving in and laying down on every issue,
then obama will be a failed one term president.

he cant hold his own party and the people will not re-elect a president they see as weak.

What people need to understand is that the private health insurance industry is in dire shape and desperately needs a bailout, and of course wants to get it without having to face its long-term death warrant in the form of an effective public option that will eventually eat its lunch. If we simply refuse to hand Big Insurance a blank check, it will collapse within a few years and open the way for single payer.

This is a case where passing a bad bill really is much worse than doing nothing.

I'm from Illinois. I could have told you this would happen a long time ago. The first time I saw Rahm was involved I guessed there was never a real commitment to this "Public Option" it was just the sugar to make the corporate welfare medicine go down. They'll tell us "they tried". When they took single payer out of the equation they put the public option up for auction and it's been sold to the insurance industry as a bargaining chip.

There's always the possibility that this is pure strategy.

Look, there's a lot of "opposition" to the public plan out there, much of it from so-called Democratic Senators. Obama puts down a marker, and its not "public plan," but goals he wants to achieve, cost savings an more universal coverage. Fine, who can argue with that?

Well, as most know, the ONLY way to really achieve these goals is with a public plan (other than single-payer itself, of course). This lets the anti-public plan folks twist and turn trying to come up with an alternate. They can't and won't.

Obama also had the most telling destruction of repub/insurance co talking points in his presser. The opposition "defies logic." I think O knows where he wants/needs to go. He just has a sneaky way of getting there.

Oh, and God, I hope I'm right or I will be seriously depressed.

When I voted for Obama in the primary I had only one reservation: I was afraid he wouldn't be tough enough. It never crossed my mind that the people he wouldn't be tough enough with were members of his own party. If the public option is not included in the health care bill, we should call it what is: a huge failure and a bad start for a man that could have been as great a president as FDR.

First, screw Rahm Emanuel.

Next, last I looked, the Dem-o-wimps had a majority. If they screw up single payer (which they will), they won't have one come 2010.

Last, anyone else receiving the "come community organize this summer for Obama" emails? For what very little it's worth, I sent mine back yesterday with a very pointed message--tell the president that, although I worked hard for election, I won't make one phone call, ring one doorbell, organize one supermarket-flyer-outreach-food-drive, or donate a single dime unless he gets behind single payer health care as his starting point.

The DINOs have already lost me. Told their fund-raiser on the phone to go to hell Monday night. I suggest we all do the same. And be sure to tell them why.

Rahm can kiss my under insured ass

but it is important to note WH Deputy Chief of Staff is Jim Messina - who worked as Max Baucus's Chief of Staff forever

that would be the same Baucus who has raised millions from Insurers via his Glacier Pac and has handed out re election cash like candy to his colleagues

Is there no campaign promise that Obama won't jettison?

None of the other options on the table can achieve anything like universal care: mandates will fail--indeed, they are designed to fail. Nor will any of the local cooperative ventures do anything to reduce costs. The "centrist" and "conservative" options will leave tens of millions in the same state of terrifying dependence in which they now reside.

Worse yet, before they bankrupt major American industries, by making health care ever more inaccessible, they will temporarily give *even* greater power to employers over employees, since the latter will be utterly dependent on employers for health care.

"Co-ops" and "tax credits" play the same sort of game with public money as school vouchers or credits for trading in an old car: they amount to a gift to those who can already afford the goods in question.

I'm no admirer of Cass Sunstein, but "Nudge" does a fine job of demonstrating the difference between opt-in and opt-out policy solutions.

It was fairly obvious as regards Guantanamo and torture photos and what have you why Obama caved. It might just be that on some of those issues he could now be hoping for a more incremental solutions, though it sure looked like he gambled and lost in a battle with entrenched interests in the national security establishment.

But here, this amounts to perhaps the most pressing moral and financial issue of this presidency: are we the sort of society that extends its most basic goods to all its members? Do we even try to make the pursuit of happiness a realistic goal for all Americans?

It seems, alas, fundamentally clear that Obama won't fight even for that.

To all of you hyperbolic, hysterical nervous nellies on this thread - please take a chill pill and grow up. You respond to sporadic news reports emanating from an ongoing complicated negogotiation for health care as if it's gospel. Stop playing checkers and begin thinking in terms of playing chess. Obama's style has always been to encourage the opposition to speak, even if he disagrees with their point of view. That way, in the end they won't feel boxed in, and are more likely to be supportive. If you want a clue as to how Obama really feels about the public option then go to www.barckobama.com and click on Take Action for Health Care Reform. Support for a public option is front and center. It wasn't there three weeksa ago. Here's what it says:

President Obama has called for health care reform in 2009 that upholds three core principles. It must:

Reduce costs " Rising health care costs are crushing the budgets of governments, businesses, individuals, and families, and they must be brought under control

Guarantee choice " Every American must have the freedom to choose their plan and doctor " including the choice of a public insurance option

Ensure quality care for all " All Americans must have quality and affordable health care

Or better yet contact you representatives and tell them what you want or get more involved. Making angry comments on a blog will not get it done.

Oh how nice. More backtracking from the promised change, led by Rahm. His pick as COS was a mistake.

Oh, and I wouldn't vote for Obama or any Dems again either if they don't pass real reform, but remembering how Obama has a way of appearing complacent before he turns around and comes out on top, I'm willing to wait and see what happens.

One thing we should be glad about though--Daschle didn't become head of HHS, because he and his good buddy Bob Dole have already compromised away a public option with their proposal. Who could have guessed that a spineless Reid clone would do such a thing?

As much as I dislike Rahm, I have to say this sounds something like I tell my kids. It goes something like this.

Kid doesn't want to do something that has to be done, like taking a bath. Cries, kicks and screams. Parent says, "If know a way to clean your body without taking a bath, I'm willing to hear it."

Hopefully, that's what Obama is signaling. Hopefully.

Rahm is tired of fucking over Republicans, it's too easy.

He likes to go back to fucking over Democrats, it causes more of a ruckus.

I've seen a few progressive blogs going nuts about this. Read the Bloomberg article. There are no direct quotes that support what's being attributed to Rahm; it's a JOURNALIST'S CHARACTERIZATION of what was said. Please forgive me if I don't think that journalists mischaracterize statements from time to time (actually, it's pretty frequent).

In fact, the Bloomberg article had to be REVISED to more accurately reflect what was actually said. Guess what? The revision made clear that the public option was NOT what Rahm was referring to; he was speaking more generally. That's exactly consistent with what Obama's been saying generally about a willingness to consider any GOOD ideas.

I'm a bit surprised that progressives are not looking at the source of this article: Bloomberg -- essentially a Wall Street publication. Of course, Wall Street/"big business" has no stake in disrupting healthcare reform. I know Wall Street is excited about the potential for costs to be driven down, and wouldn't want do anything to throw a wrench (i.e., exploiting or increasing party divisions) in any Democratic efforts to bring about reform.