I'd say the right way to think about what happened today with the public option is that Democrats failed to score a complete Knock-out of the Senate opposition.

Had either the Rockefeller or Schumer amendments passed today, the public option would essentially be certain to be part of the reform package.

Between the House and Senate, there are 5 committees who need to vote on health care. 4 of the 5 committees voted out a bill with a public option. The 3 House committees approved a single unified bill, HR3200, which had a strong public option in it, similar to the one in the Rockefeller amendment.

The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (aka HELP) committee had a "level playing field" public option, similar to the one in the Schumer amendment.

The hooplah today was in the other (and final) committee, the Senate Finance Committee.

Once the Finance committee votes on a final bill (days, if not weeks away), it will need to be merged with the bill from the HELP committee on the Senate floor, and then put to a vote. Had both bills contained a public option from committee, the pre-amendment Senate bill would have contained a public option, and it would have required an amendment to strip it out (which Democrats could and would filibuster).

So this shouldn't really be looked on as a defeat for the public option -- it's just that we didn't knock out the opposition in the first couple rounds of the match.

I suspect we'll end up with a bill with a Schumer-style public option, and no Republican votes in either house when we get to the end of the process.

What happened to the filibuster-proof majority?

You guys should move to Canada or something. Your politicians don't work for you, it seems.

Or Australia - lots of good cheap land here if you happen to like the desert.

I really feel like all hell will break loose if this doesn't pass, you can almost feel the tension building and i think a lot of it is being felt by the silent 65% who support the public option but can see that politicians don't have their interests at heart.

>> ^demon_ix:
What happened to the filibuster-proof majority?

It's dependent on Democrats sticking together to the last man, and we essentially have about ten Democrats who're afraid to admit publicly that they actually support the Democratic platform because they're afraid of being perceived as "liberal" in their usually-conservative states.

They need to get over it.

You guys should move to Canada or something. Your politicians don't work for you, it seems.

There are lots of reasons for that. Part of it is that there's about 30-35% of the American population who don't think politicians should stick up for people in any other way than cutting taxes, dismantling regulation, fighting endless wars, deporting all the Mexicans, banning abortion, and keeping gay people from being able to have a legal marriage.

Part of it is because that 35% was more like 50-60% for most of the last 3 decades, and a lot of the regulations that kept corporate bribery in check got dismantled (along with a lot of other things).

Also, the Democrats in the post-1968 era have refused to organize the party in a way that would enforce some party discipline. Joe Lieberman was Al Gore's running mate for the Presidency in 2000. In 2008 he campaigned for John McCain. He's one of the people who make up that "60" number, and as an aside, he's from a deep-blue state.

There are a lot of Democrats who think the only way they can win elections is to essentially be moderate Republicans. That time has passed. This will be a good test to see how many Democrats realize it.

>> ^NetRunner:
and we essentially have about ten Democrats who're afraid to admit publicly that they actually support the Democratic platform because they're afraid of being perceived as "liberal" in their usually-conservative states.

Do they really believe that by working for the people who didn't vote for them instead of the people who did, they will get more votes in the next election?

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Don't get me wrong, Israeli politicians are the largest pool of corruption I've yet to encounter. Even our PM is being indicted soon. I'm just amazed at people working against their own party still being able to call themselves Democrats.

>> ^demon_ix:
Do they really believe that by working for the people who didn't vote for them instead of the people who did, they will get more votes in the next election?

When I'm feeling charitable and optimistic, I think they're trying to be where they think the political "center" is -- halfway beteween the center-right Democratic party, and the right-wing-extremist Republican party.

When I'm feeling neither charitable nor optimistic, I assume they're taking the position their campaign donors want them to take.

Don't get me wrong, Israeli politicians are the largest pool of corruption I've yet to encounter. Even our PM is being indicted soon. I'm just amazed at people working against their own party still being able to call themselves Democrats.

That's the part I really think we need to change. It's one thing if you feel like you need to make some noise about how you don't like parts of the bill in order to appear moderate, it's a whole other matter if you're going to threaten to aid the opposition party in using parliamentary procedure to block the entire bill unless they strip out something that a majority of the party (and a majority of the public) think is important.

People who even make one little tiny indication that they would even consider doing something like that should immediately be hearing from the party leadership that even hinting at it puts them in jeopardy of losing their committee seats/campaign funding/memebership in the caucus.

Without that kind of threat, it's an easy choice between pissing off big corporate donors, and pissing off liberals, especially if they think pissing off liberals wins them more votes than it loses them.