Sources: Expect Disappointed Progressives After Obama's Big Health Care Speech

why?

Key phrases from Brian:
"Though I can not confirm Grijalva's claims entirely"
"number of off-the-record conversations"
"Low-level White House officials have reached out"
"which strikes some"
"Many believe"
"That said, the process is still very fluid"

Message to White House: Please do not waste money sending emails to me.

I'll say one thing about Republicans. Unlike Democrats, they understand the importance of strengthening their base.

I just got an email from the Obama folks asking for a donation. I'd given money to the effort in the past. I told them that now I'm waiting first to see if there's a public option.

How did we get to the point where Olympia Snowe is writing Obama's signature bill??

And Progressives may disappoint Obama by viting down the piece fo crap bill that is left.

What a disappointing president.

No hope for any change. Just more of the same.

Schakowsky on NPR this morning said that a public option in the final bill is not "a make it or break it" for her to vote for it.
http://www.npr.org/templates/player/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=112489187&m=112484593

The Clintons couldn't pass health care reform because they passed NAFTA first and so they lost their base for everything else.

Max Baucus says that in order to get "pre-existing conditions" off insurance policies, the insurance companies have to make it up in volume. That volume is mandates. This bill will be a bag of crap tied with a very yellow ribbon.

What might work is the "Mad as Hell Docs" with their Care-A-Van going from Portland, Oregon to Washington, D.C. Joining Doctors on strike will be far more effective than us writing letters and wringing our hands. http://www.madashelldoctors.com/

WTF Obama you had a deal. You had a royal flush and you folded like beaten bitch. Obama has a 60% approval rating, control of the house by wide margins and a super majority in the Senate and he let the powerless and feeble republicans play him like a cheap puppet.

...Low-level White House officials have reached out to certain reform groups that have staked their ground on the need for a public option, I'm told, and warned them not to spend any more money advocating for the policy....

This only confirms what I thought when I read Theda Skocpol's post on TPMCafe yesterday,

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/09/02/how_progressives_should_weigh_compromises/

It so clearly sounded to me like it was following suggestions from a "talking points memo." Matter of fact, it made me think of how she rarely publishes here unless she's got some political talking points duties to attend to. The emphasis of her essays here are rarely analysis, they are more often along the lines of "what progressives should do now."

I've always wondered whether the title of this site was meant to be ironic or not. More and more I think I was an idiot to think that could be the case rather than that it was created for doing talking points.

If I'm not to "waste" my money on ads promoting fiscal sanity, "change we can believe in" and the ONLY workable compromise left to us since single payer has been flushed from the very beginning, then I'll be sure not to "waste" my money on any more corporate-controlled Democrats, either. Sadly, this begins to look as if it includes President Obama.

I will simply NOT accept a mandate guaranteeing that everyone just has to "shut up and buy" protection from criminally irresponsible, proven murderous corporations: guaranteeing phat profits for billionaires while our once-proud nation flounders in crony corruption and 2nd world health care models.

To all those superior beings who would accuse me of being spoiled" or impatient and not realizing the incomparable brilliance of Obama's maneuvering, I quote a beloved war criminal: "trust, but verify"!

I am deeply hopeful that this is all "part of a plan", a rope-a-dope for the wingnuts to allow them to show how looney they are. They are and they have so demonstrated. That said, where's our advantage? Like the entire Blue Cur contingent, I am coming to believe that Obama is simply more than willing to "give away" OUR money and prosperity for frankly pathetic, incremental gains, ALLOWED by the very corporate "personages" we are supposed to be bringing under control. We will get something for our troubles and votes and money and energy. It just won't be actual, you know, change!

This is a critical moment in the Obama Presidency and the nation's future. At a time of crisis such as this, we need Obama to LEAD, not finesse. If the chain of bribery, (excuse me, campaign contributions), leading to singularly propitious legislation, leading to yet another lurch toward corporate ownership is not broken now, it may never be. Events of the past few weeks have demonstrated clearly that expecting a second pass at the issue in a few years (or decades?) is delusional.

A mandate to force all Americans to buy protection without a workable model for reigning in costs is actually NOT worse than the status quo. A bad bill now will sever all opportunities for health CARE reform, let alone health INSURANCE reform for a long time to come. The cost of slap-dash, stupidly short-sighted compromises now will suck the resources out of any attempts at reform.

I say HELL NO! If the Dems in Congress produce an epic fail and the Obama team abets the process, then I too will contribute nothing to the "Democrat" party. I won't call for a 3rd party. I'll just work as hard as I can to primary every stinking one of the curs and cowards currently infesting our party. I don't think Obama is suicidal. The next few weeks will tell.

Obama is a bigger thief than Bush. This is all about delivering 47 million new customers and huge government subsidies to yet another branch of the finance industry.

"Though I can not confirm Grijalva's claims entirely, after a number of off-the-record conversations with congressional and advocacy sources.." "Low-level White House officials..."

Again with the no-name quotes, and we're supposed to believe you? Why? Because you just LOVE to get your readers' knickers
all in a bunch? No thanks.

I'll wait until you give us a NAME to go with the quote, or until I hear it from the President himself. Until that time, I'll ignore this drivel, thank you very much!

Count one less vote for Obama in 2012

Obama in the pocket of bigPharma, bigInsurance, bigWallStreet. (His biggest campaign contributer--Goldman Sachs--enough said. Summers and chief of staff, Emmanuel ,not to mention Chelsea Clinton, are hedge fund billionaires/millionaires.) Does the term oligarchy ring a bell?

Obama gives off an aroma of "change" but his change is a distinction without a difference from what the previous Republicans, or indeed the Clinton administration, offered.

After all of the money over that I gave to Obama throughout the campaign and more so, after all of the hearty defending, boosting, volunteering that I did, it will be an awful blow if Obama wimps out on health care and settles for anything without a public option. I did much fighting and debating here on TPM among other places about Hillary, and it is with great humility and shame that I come to all of my former adversaries to say I'm sorry. You were right, and I was wrong. Hillary was the one.

Hillary Clinton would never ever have wussed out the way that Mr. Obama is. It was the single factor that I found most appealing about her, but oddly I took Ted Kennedy's backing of Obama and his clear statement where he said "We will have universal health care" as reassurance that I could go with Obama.

I apologize. Hillary was the right choice. You were right, and I was wrong. But, understand that should she run against Obama in 2012, and if there is no public option passed, I will be with you. I guess all of that stuff about her having more b*lls than Obama was true too.

What benefit does Obama expect to gain by getting one lone Republican, Olympia Snowe, to support him?

"Many believe that the administration--reportedly in fevered negotiations with Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME)--will put their efforts into securing a health care reform bill that calls for a public option as a fallback--to be triggered at a later date if and only if private insurers don't manage to rein in premium prices on their own."

I don't understand why Obama would go for a trigger. Assume that the trigger is in place. If the threat rationale is valid then things work out and then there is no public option.

But if a threat does not do what Snowe thinks it will do that will mean some period - what many months? years? - in which health reform will be seen to be a failure.

Will people sit back and notice that this possibility of failure was foreseen and built into the system there is a mechanism - the trigger? I doubt it.

Instead there will be mountains of stories about how the long awaited, much promised benefits of comprehensive health care reform has failed to do its job. And the Insurance industry and it allies and its paid for Congresspersons will pile on.

Under this assault of bad press and pressure, will the public option be allowed to get triggered? I doubt it.

The public option will be seen as just throwing more unworkable government regulation on top of already failing regulation. And there will be a deregulation fever - maybe after the dems and Obama get thrown out for failing in the first place.

That's one hell of a coin toss.

If you are the insurance industry under these circumstances what would you do?

Would you worry about the threat of the trigger and do everything to make it not needed or would you work like hell to hasten failure (and poison the political well) so that it would be untenable to even try to fire it - and in the process getting your monopoly back.

Congratulations to the Teabaggers! You've proven that if you just shout LOUD enough, act OBNOXIOUSLY enough, and bring guns to townhalls you can get your way, even when you represent just the tiniest minority in this country! Elections? Bah, who needs them when you have Glenn Beck! I guess there's a lesson to be learned here for all the treehugging peacenik lefties.

I doubt very seriously that the White House has told anybody what is in the speech because they haven't decided themselves yet.

Mandate plus NO public option- hello welding class and hello Canada!

Not that I expected for him to be a so called "savior" that wags liked to paint him as just a few short months ago (oh, how time flies) but even cynical me is surprised by how craven the WH is on bi-partisanship and to industry. R.I.P. Democratic Party-see you in the funny papers. So sad to think the party of the common man be turned into the party of corporatists and Wall St. If the Republicans are smart (not likely) they would paint us exactly that way and kick our asses ten ways til next Sunday in 2010.

well, obama was a strong campaigner at least.

he's a little less evil than Cheney/Bush, so that's a good thing.

at this point, it's probably best to expect nothing good at all from our new corporatist president, and then we can dance a jig when we get the tiniest of crumb tossed our way.

If Obama and the Democratic party fail us on the public option, then the party has out-lived its usefulness, and the time has come to shut off life support. How long has it been since the party has been a real opposition to the Republican one, anyway? The donkey has become a mule, which is usually a breeding between a horse and a donkey, but in this case is a breeding between a donkey and an elephant. Whichever, both breedings are sterile.

Did you know that if you hold your breath long enough, you'll pass out, and that while you're passed out, it is impossible to die of any other health-related causes? So, done repeatedly (and with proper professional support), it is entirely possible to live to 80 or even 90 years old without requiring health care.

(Of course, after about the 17th time, you've killed off enough brain cells to be a legitimate Congressional candidate. And they have health care.)

The debate we are having in this country right now is badly deformed. The important thing is to guarantee that everyone has access to quality health care at all times. It happens to be the case that systems where the government guarantees access are more financially efficient. This is an argument in their favor. But universal access would be morally required even if it didn't save a cent.

That the public option has become such a central part of this debate reveals how far we are from a rational approach to health care. It is important only because the nation's elites refuse to design a socialized health care system that would provide better health care for less money, and would do so without requiring triggers or mechanisms for insurer compliance.

As long as we allow private enterprises that profit from refusing people care to be involved in our health care system, we will have a system that wastes money and kills people.

There is one thing to consider as gained from passing a less ambitious bill - all the Republican broadsides against it are demonstrably false. We know that, and so do they (or the leaders, at any rate - the average town hall screamer thinks Jesus built the pyramids, so they don't count). Which means their end game is COUNTING on no bill at all, so they can see "look at all those horrible things that didn't happen becuase we killed the bill."

But if a bill does pass - even a weaker one - their charges will prove to be false. More people will get insurance and no one will be subject to a death panel or forced to join the Happy Maoist Health Co-op instead of Aetna, and the only thing the Republicans have - fear - will evaporate. The same people that love to tell pollsters and town hall audiences that they don't like the idea of the government doing this or that are always the first ones to sign up for a govt subsidy, you can bet on it.

It could very well be the end of the Republican Party, and they know it - that's why they're expressing such grave CONCERNS about Democrats moving forward with any bill.

And remember, this is legislation, not the Torah - all acts of Congress are subject to further review, tinkering, etc. What you get now isn't the only thing that will ever happen on health care, you can still keep trying to elect better and more progressive Democrats to improve on the system with future legislation all you want - in fact, it would be easier to do if the Republicans get royally screwed on health care this year. Think about it.

I'm sorry but this is F*cking outrageous. It's time to name the "low level staffers". One thing's for sure, I'm gonna save a lot of money during the next election. I'm gonna need it to pay the increase in premiums.

"low-level staffers", eh? Sounds to me as if there is opposition in the Executive Office (most likely NOT the President) to the idea of the public option and the opposer(s) want supporters to back off and leave the field clear for them (hope that makes sense?).
Yesterday, ABC News implied that Axelrod said there wasn't going to be a public option, but the only quote supplied says nothing about it (much more exciting reporting, that way!). That there is opposition to the public option in the upper levels of the administration is undoubtedly correct. How much influence that opposition has on the final outcome is something else again. We should continue to keep the pressure on ALL Democrats; if the public option is dropped there will be plenty of time for corrective action, or inaction, (as in donations, etc) before the next elections.

A circular firing squad of Democrats is just what the Republicans want. Calm down people. Who brought us this far by making health care reform his primary issue? Isn't it Obama? Take a few deep breaths. We're on the road to a major, historic achievement that will be remembered for years to come. Try to see the forest and not the single tree you love the most. The lunatic right want us to fail. Don't play into their hands. I'm as left-wing as any of you. But I stand with Obama.