Blue Dogs warming to the opt-out

Okay, okay, here's the short version.

The public option is getting more support from the polls and the media. The Congressional Blue Dogs, facing more pressure from their constituents, are starting to “frame” their position, saying they will not accept a public option linked to Medicare, but are warming up to the opt-out proposal, although Lieberman is still playing with fire by screwing with Obama both on health care and on czars. Other Democratic strategists are reminding the Republicans (and the Blue Dogs) that they have other tools they can win with – the conference report and reconciliation (although so far they are not talking up the notion of having people vote yes on cloture and then no on the bill itself); even the Republicans are starting to admit tacitly that the Democrats may very well stick together on the public option. Reid is talking tough about delivering the goods, presumably because he knows he can’t survive if they pass a crappy wimpy bill; Obama, who also realizes the need for a strong bill, is still hanging back, but will soon need to step in and lead, for a number of reasons – but when he does, a lot of people will fall in line.

Now, a whole lot of details about all this.

A new ABC poll shows, again, that the American people want the public option, not bipartisanship for its own sake, and the NY Times also endorsed the public option.

Reid is running ads all over Nevada, claiming he’s guy who can “deliver in a way that no one else can”. So with the problems he already has back home, he knows he can’t deliver a crappy bill, so perhaps his tough talk in the ad betokens his confidence that a good bill is coming. In Washington Reid is, annoyingly, still playing more of a birthing coach that a leader, still mooing about the 60-vote barrier, but still, there’s that ad. So perhaps for him it’s about the bill itself, rather than him doing a lap around the rotunda wearing a Superman cape. The ad is a good sign.

Obama does want the public option – he wouldn’t be pushing Pelosi to keep pushing the House bill to the left if he was just going to cave. He has been noncommittal all summer in order to make talks with the Republicans possible and keep the Finance committee from collapsing, but a lot of people – includingCongressional Democrats – want to see Obama honest-to-God lead, and not just because of the health care issue. The good news is that when he does step in, some wobbly Blue Dogs will finally fall in line. Hopefully, enough of them.

As we learned from the Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act of 1988, the American people will indeed rebel against a bad health care plan. The MCCA was so bad it was repealed after a year. By the same token, if we do have an individual mandate, but do NOT have the public option, then millions of people will be forced to buy from the private insurers, who have just PROMISED us all gigantic rate increases. Under those circumstances, a rebellion – right during the 2010 midterms -- is certain. Add to that the fact that Obama has made clear that he doesn’t want to sign a bad bill, i.e. one that would start a REAL national teabagger riot. All this leads inescapably to the conclusion that Obama is unlikely to sign anything that looks even remotely like the Baucus fiasco, or triggers.
Axelrod is still talking about solving all this in the House-Senate conference, which could be risky. Hopefully the White House is just reminding the Republicans of how many paths to victory there are for Obama – just like Harkin is ostentatiously wheeling out the reconciliation weapon. Read on:

Democrats are test-driving the reconciliation process, which they can use to pass health reform with 50 votes if getting 60 for cloture proves problematic. They are testing out the reconciliation process by using it on a different issue, shifting student loan money away from subsidizing private lending and toward Pell Grants, which would move about $9 billion a year from bankers to students. This will be a great test of the reconciliation prospects for health care, because a lot of the same people are involved: Harkin is pushing for the student loan bill, the Republicans and a couple of Blue Dogs oppose it, and the Senate parliamentarian will have to rule on what passes and what doesn’t – this would be a good time to gauge his mood on the whole reconciliation concept. And publicly flirting with the reconciliation mechanism sends a message to the Blue Dogs: “If you screw Obama over in the first floor vote, not only are you going to bring the wrath of the whole party down no your heads, but you’re going to lose anyway because we have this second mechanism we can use to go around you.”

Baucus, the most conservative of the big three Senators currently hashing out the language for the Senate health reform bill, seems to be warming to the opt-out option. He reeled off the list of options, the “most pure” plan involving a public option linked to Medicare, and the many “less pure” plans such as Schumer’s public option plan, the opt-out, the opt-in, the coops, the triggers. He implied that the “most pure” version – the one linked to Medicare – was the nonstarter, echoing the sentiment of fellow Blue Dog Kent Conrad; in fact, other conservative Democrats are beginning to subtly draw that line – it’s the Medicare-linked public option they won’t go for, which is a very good sign. Baucus expressed particular interest in the opt-out. So it sounds as though the conservative Democrats are warming up to the notion that giving Obama the opt-out package would be a good compromise between the more robust public option, and openly defying the President. They seem to be realizing that defying a popular president in order to block a popular legislative effort is suicidal. Senate liberals are leaning on the Blue Dogs, to the tune of “you don’t want to be the one person who kills reform and cripples the party and the president, do you?”

Interestingly, it still sounds as though the Democratic leaders are not making much of an effort to persuade Blue Dogs to have their cake and eat it too – vote yes on cloture and then no on the bill itself. It sounds as though they’re shooting for 60 on the actual bill. Not sure why – the split-the-difference notion allows you to get a better bill and still get to 60. But as long as their talking opt-out rather than clinging to Baucus’ idiotic coops or Snowe’s fatally flawed trigger, we’re okay.

The various Blue Dogs are dragging this out as long as possible – as soon as they commit to a position, they no longer get all the attention, which is pretty childish; and as long as the three Senators are behind closed doors hashing out the bill, the Blue Dogs aren’t getting the ego massaging and schmoozing they need so desperately. Lincoln may have been speaking kindly of the trigger option in an effort to block the more liberal opt-out, but in the meantime her Arkansans back home, who have said in the polls that they want the public option, slapped her silly on the issue in a recent forum. Lincoln isn’t the only Blue Dog facing liberal pressure back home: Carper, Nelson and Conrad are also facing potential revolts from home-state Democrats, Mainers are putting pressure on Snowe and Collins. Specter, interestingly, is touting the public option, perhaps feeling the pressure from Sestak back in Pennsylvania. Conrad may be leaving himself room to back Obama after all, by specifying, as I noted, that it’s the Medicare-based public option he can’t vote for although he stills prefers coops and triggers; Obama worked him over in the Oval today.

Pretty soon Democratic Senators are going to be asking Lieberman – “Why are you insisting on an investigation of Obama’s “czars”, when you didn’t investigate Bush’s czars when you had the same oversight job? If you’re going to give preferential treatment to the Republicans, why don’t you just take off the mask and join the GOP?” This actually gives me hope here – Lieberman can’t be stupid enough to defy Obama on czars and then defy him again on health care, because he knows he’d be thrown out of the Democratic caucus. Hopefully he’s tacking to the right on czars so he can then tack to the left on cloture for health reform.

I think the Republicans know how much trouble they’re in. It is now emerging that Senate Republicans don’t expect any Blue Dog Democrats to block passage of the health reform bill, even if there is a public option included. The Republicans might even lose Snowe and Collins, who could conceivably support cloture. So now the only remaining strategies for the GOP are delay (they demand several weeks of debate, which the Democrats rejected) and more lies about tax increases, seniors getting denied care, some new variation on the death-panel bullcrap, etc etc.

The “grab yer guns and destroy Obama” meme is now an internet game!

The wingnuts have set up an online “overthrow Obama” game. According to the backstory, Obama takes over in a coup (which we call an “election” in the real world), kills Glenn Beck, and puts all the other rightwing pundits in concentration camps – Rush, Sean, Billo etc. A revolution ensues, the military refuses to fight to defend Obama, and Sarah Palin takes command of the revolutionaries. The game encourages the players to “invade” and “conquer” their neighbors (presumably the nasty little brown ones).

http://crooksandliars.com/node/32078

So now mass insanity is now a web game like Sudoku or crosswords.

Fun fun fun for the whole family!

The GOP’s really bad week

Where, oh where do I begin?

A new focus-group study has been released, a study of the voters in the Republican base. They really do hate hate hate Obama. They believe that Obama has a secret agenda to lie to the American people so he can deliberately damage and bankrupt the country, destroy the country’s founding principles, take away our freedoms, and expand government into a socialist model. Interestingly they like Beck more than Rush, and they fear that Beck and his staff are at personal danger because of his bravery and honesty. Neatly enough, these people who are outraged at the alleged liberal worship of Obama “the Messiah” were the same drooling idiots who ejaculated into their overalls whenever their Messiah, Reagan, favored them with a TV appearance; they still worship him in death like Jesus.

For 2010 races, the GOP wants to attract moderates, but the effort is alienating the party base. Some candidates who were specially selected by the party are now being undermined by the teabaggers – in some cases teabag candidates have launched third-party runs and are outperforming the mainstream party choices. The intra-party squabbling is costing the party money, hurting registration, and helping Democrats to pull ahead in key races. So the Republicans will become harder to deal with on the Hill (as they tack to the right to mollify the base) but then easier to beat in the voting booth. They have no one but themselves to blame – they worked for years to drive the party to the right, and now they’re surprised that the rest of the party (and the country) didn’t follow. GOP leaders are becoming more vocal in their concern: Bill Frist admitted that the birthers are a problem for the GOP and they need to be brought down to earth; Linsey Graham told them to knock the crap off. The dream scenario is for the wingnuts to split off from the GOP and form their own party: the Democrats will never lose again.

A new R2K poll measures the popularity of Obama but also other top leaders and the parties themselves. Ignore the top-line data -- we all know that the poll numbers for Obama are rising, Boehner is down to 13 percent, McConnell 17 – because the important data is at the bottom: support for the GOP outside the South is down to 9.3 percent.

A separate poll shows that Palin’s numbers are at an all-time low.

The GOP’s new website launch was a disaster. Laughter across the country.

Four Congressional wingnuts have been laughed off of Capitol Hill, for screeching that interns of Middle Eastern descent working on Capitol Hill are actually terrorist spies.

Michael Steele, who never misses a chance to put his foot in his mouth, promised to be the cow on the tracks who was going to stop the health-reform train, the kind of metaphor that only Wile E. Coyote could love. Moooooooooo!

A Boehner staffer was forced to admit that Boehner had goofed when he said he’d never heard anybody in Ohio say they like the public option.

Romney was ridiculed for screeching that the public option would absolutely be “death” across the country.

Likewise Grassley was hollering that health care reform – which hasn’t even been finalized yet – might be unconstitutional, which betrays a staggering ignorance of Article I Section VIII of the Constitution (he seems to forget that such objections didn’t stop Social Security, Medicare or the VA). A new poll shows that Grassley, after blocking health reform all summer, now has a much tighter reelection race than he had before.

Rove is whining that Bush never rejected requests by Afghanistan commanders for more troops. Gee, anything wrong with this? First, Obama hasn’t rejected anything yet. Second, Bush did reject some requests. Third, it’s the President’s call, not the commanders. Fourth, when, in 5000 years of recorded military history, has a commander ever asked for FEWER troops? That would be…never.
The neocons are trying to game the system, by demanding 100,000 new troops, to make an increase of 40,000 sound like the reasonable middle option – the Fallacy of the False Choice.

GOP republicans block extension of unemployment benefits. Just in time for Christmas!

A Louisiana judge was nailed for denying an inter-racial couple a marriage license – an action ruled unconstitutional 40 years ago.

The GOP has been busted for lying about Obama education adviser Kevin Jennings, because he’s gay. They claim he ignores the sexual abuse of children. They’ve already been debunked.

Republican Senator Richard Burr publicly browbeat a legal expert who dared to question the right of insurance companies to treat being victimized by domestic violence as a preexisting condition. Getting clubbed over the head by your husband can cause you to lose your health coverage.

But that’s okay, because Rush will win back the women for the GOP!..Rush and the rest of the lunatic fringe are launching sexist attacks at Snowe and Collins – all because Snowe dared to vote for the Baucus bill, and Collins did…um, nothing at all. “Women, damn it!...Stupid girl…Jezebel stabbed America in the back”. Limbaugh describes Snowe’s supports as castrati, just as he did for supporters of Hillary.

The “lawyer” leading the birther charge, Orly Taitz, was fined $20,000 for misconduct; she responded by calling the judge delusional and corrupt. Somebody’s going to jail..!

The GOP spin machine has thrown a rod. Their laughable effort to spin the Nobel Peace Prize as a bad thing for Obama was laughed out of town, and Obama even got a Nobel bounce in the latest Gallup. Undeterred, they are trying to spin the rise of the Dow to 10,000: after spending weeks in the spring, blaming Obama for the drop in the Dow, they are now referring to the rise in the Dow as the “Bush recovery”. So apparently all downward movement is Obama’s fault, but all upward movement is credited to the ex-president who is now back in Crawford eating Cheetos and watching the Longhorns.

Limbaugh’s effort to buy the Rams was laughed out of the room by NFL executives who are almost all Republicans. Ouch!

Beck went into another of his raving crying fits when a White House staffer had the temerity to quote Mao Zedong to the tune of "You fight your war, and I'll fight mine." Beck claims the staffer has a hero-worship for as mass murderer!! I guess he was asleep when Bush 43, McCain and Ralph Reed also cited Mao.

Conservative CNN “commentator” Alex Castellanos was outed as a shill for the insurance industry.

Senate narrows it down to public option, opt-out, and trigger

Apparently the Senate leadership has narrowed it down to a public option, an opt-out, and a trigger; I think the opt-out is the most likely.

When the Senate leaders emerged from the Democratic caucus meeting, they were boasting that the caucus was united, but today it emerges that there was more squabbling about the public option than we were originally told. Rockefeller joined Schumer in publicly pressuring Reid to include the public option in the original merged bill, but it sounds as though Reid wanted to leave it out, and then try to add it as an amendment later, which is stupid because it could be filibustered.

Here’s the key: as it stands now, Tom Harkin says that the Senators have narrowed it all down to three options: a full public option, a public-option with an opt-out feature, and Snowe’s trigger. The trick is that if you present people with three options, they are more likely to choose the middle one, in this case the opt-out, which would be an acceptable outcome.

A problem with the deliberations in the Senate is that the 10-15 Blue Dog Democrats, along with a few centrist Republicans like Snowe, ALL want to be the star of the show, the deciding vote. We rewarded Snowe for playing hard to get, with months of adoring attention, and now a dozen other Senators want to be schmoozed and courted in the same way. To my way of thinking, liberals like Rockefeller held their noses and voted for the execrable Baucus bill; now the Blue Dogs need to hold their noses and vote for cloture, at least, even if they don’t vote for the bill itself. Mark Pryor says he can’t see any Democrat joining a filibuster, and he damn well better be right.

One bit of good news: Lieberman says he’s inclined to support cloture but he hasn’t decided yet. I guess he hasn’t decided whether he wants to be thrown out of the Democratic caucus, either.

House Democrats are talking about a negotiated public option, with a trigger that would potentially launch a Medicare-linked public option later on; that plan is actually to the left of all three Senate options, so it’s a longshot.

The insurers aren’t even trying to act in a reasonable way, to sway the debate. Guardian, an insurance firm, has cancelled all coverage in New York state rather than cover ONE muscular dystrophy patient. A Guardian executive referred to such patients as “dogs” which the firm could simply “get rid of”.

Standing up to the insurance bullies

The AHIP insurance people who just claimed that passage of the Baucus bill would “force” insurers to raise rates sky high, have been exposed as pathetic liars. Even the accountants who wrote their report for them, admitted that if other the health reform provisions succeed, that will offset the costs they forecast – they admittedly cherry-picked which provisions to score out. Undeterred, the AHIP people are still screeching that health reform will cause seniors to lose benefits – I guess they think old people are stupid – and Blue Cross is coming out with AHIP II, another pack of lies from the industry, warning that reform will cause them to jack up rates 50 percent.

Even more appalling that the lies in the AHIP report is the overt threat. If any other industry dared to tell the country – “don’t try to regulate us or we will use our monopoly power and our bribes in the Senate to rob you even more than we are already” – they would be shut down by the Justice Department instantly. The insurance extortion was so obvious that even CNN, in the form of Wolf Blitzer, slapped around insurance spokeswoman Karen Ignani. Perhaps he did that because CNN just got caught using another insurance shill, Alex Castellanos, as an allegedly “unbiased” reporter.

And all of this has backfired. Democrats, who had to wash the bad taste out of their mouths after they were forced to defend the Baucus bill they hate against the AHIP attack, now say that the AHIP blackmail makes the public option more likely –the insurers themselves proved the need for an alternative to their services (Pelosi said as much). The AHIP threat makes the Baucus plan less likely since it will put us all at the mercy of the insurers, and it makes the trigger option look pretty silly – if they’re already promising to jack up rates, which would set off the trigger, why give them a test which we know they will fail? And the past behavior of the insurers undermined their threat anyway -- since we know that they will raise our rates whether we pass reform or not, there’s no reason not to pass it.

Now that the insurers have taken the gloves off, the Democrats have done the same. Leahy, Schumer, Conyers and even Reid are working on revoking the anti-trust exemption which the insurers have had for half a century. The entire Senate leadership is sponsoring the idea. Schumer thinks that such an amendment can pass (it wasn’t clear whether they would put it in the merged bill, which would be good, or add it afterward, which would be bad because it could be filibustered on its own). Some say it’s just a threat, but I see no reason not to follow through and pass it; a bargaining chip perhaps.

This just in – the anti-trust effort has now been joined by….Pelosi. Ouch! If Obama jumps in as well, look for some serious crap to ensue.

And the Democrats are taking other measures that will make the Republicans and the insurers shake in their boots.

First, the Democratic Senate caucus met today – a meeting in which NO ONE spoke out against the public option --and the Senators came out saying it was likely that whatever bill they wrote would get all 60 Democrats and possibly even some Republicans.

Second, Sherrod Brown came out of the meeting and pointed out that no Democrat wanted to be the guy who would go down in history as the guy who destroyed health reform for another decade or two. He essentially dared any Blue Dog to contradict him on the issue of breaking ranks. To date, no Democrat has said he will vote against the final bill or against cloture.

Third, Pelosi is offering House Blue Dogs some money for rural hospitals, to help make the House bill as strong as possible, for when the House-Senate conference meets.

Fourth, Pelosi implied that if the Blue Dogs force the public option out of the bill, the Democrats will be forced to remove the individual mandate too – which would cost the insurers billions.

Fifth, House Ways and Means just approved the measure allowing the Senate to use reconciliation (it works that way because all budget bills must start in the House). Rangel said they’re just keeping the door open for reconciliation, but a GOP Congressman said that the Democrats have pulled the trigger and it is more likely that they will use reconciliation.

Sixth, Obama is mobilizing his zillion-man army to campaign for health reform.

Seventh – and Obama is also rounding up national Republicans who support reform. Bob Dole is a biggie.

And the people in the know, know that the insurers are going to lose all this. Since the death-panel wingnut lunacy peaked out around Labor Day, the stocks of the top six insurance companies have dropped a whopping 11 percent of their value. The investors know that the insurers are going to get whacked and they can’t stop it.

And how did we get here? Simple facts:

Almost everybody will have at least one major illness in their lives.

Once you are seriously ill, you’re at the mercy of the insurers, who can cut you off at whim.

They don’t even have to give a good reason: their justifications include preexisting conditions and disqualifiers such as teenage acne, pregnancy, and being a victim of domestic violence.

They profit when they cut you off – they have an incentive to deny you the coverage you paid for already.

Almost half of personal bankruptcies in America happen to people who got sick and HAVE insurance, but they get screwed over anyway.

In many cases, if you get screwed over, you can’t even sue the insurers.

And that means that ANY of us can have our lives ruined by the insurers.

They have effective monopolies in 38 states, so many Americans have little choice but to bend over and get screwed.

Trying to fix these problems at the state level is impossible, because the insurers have already bought and paid for all the state legislators they need; the whole country is littered with all the sweetheart deals which the state capitols have given the insurers.

Without a strong NATIONAL plan which is OUTSIDE the control or interference of the insurers, we have no recourse. They will rob us blind and drive us to the poorhouse.

And as long as they have that anti-trust exemption, and no federal controls, their capacity for defrauding and screwing us over, for blackmailing us, for controlling our own Congress, will remain unchecked.

Is Reid going wobbly on using the cloture option?

Washington insiders expect a health bill by Thanksgiving or New Year’s, depending on Obama’s travel.

The polls continue to show support for health reform. Only 18 percent of Americans believe the line that America has the best health care in the world; even among Republicans the number is only 28 percent. Olympia Snowe’s home state wants the public option by a margin of 58-29. And support will increase even more since Obama is turning out his grassroots troops to mobilize for health reform.

But we’re still overcoming the media’s laziness in reporting the issue accurately: in addition to the media’s parrotting dishonest wingnut talking points about death panels and benefit cuts for seniors, there is a strong likelihood that one reason the White House wanted Rockefeller and the liberals to vote for the Baucus bill, was that the media was likely to portray a defeat of the Baucus bill as a defeat for Obama and reform, instead of a rejection of a crappy bill.

One thing that could help goose the public option forward, is the fact that a lot of people are leery of having an individual mandate WITHOUT also having the public option: that really puts us all at the mercy of the insurers who just boasted that they are going to jack up our rates. Now: according to Senate rules, if they hold a House-Senate conference to reconcile the two versions of the bill, and both versions have the individual mandate in it, then it will be extremely difficult to take it out – you’d need 60 votes, and you know the Republicans would all fight to keep it in. So then the negotiators in the conference would be put on the spot: since we can’t take out the individual mandate, don’t we need the public option even more?

Other options include allowing states to opt in or out of the public option, or allowing states to choose from a list of options including local coops. The liberals at least want something that isn’t too weak. Some have suggested a combination, such as an opt-in with a trigger. Obama and Reid apparently have been talking about the trigger option with Snowe, but hopefully they were just buttering her up. Baucus’ plan is coming under more fire – with costs for a family of four at around $700 a month, around 17 million could be priced out of the market. Things we want to look for include: strong subsidies, protection against high out-of-pocket costs, controlling providers (drugs, hospitals, manufacturers), making the system strong and national with power to control insurers, opening the plan to those already employed, taxing the Cadillac plans, strong mandates for both individuals and employers, capping rate hikes.

The problem here appears to be Reid.

Reid says he prefers the public option but he keeps going wobbly on us; first he said he needed 50 votes to act, then when we got 50 he needed 60, and now that he gets 60 he says he won’t enforce discipline and will just seek a reform bill that can get 60 votes on its own, rather than demanding that Democrats support cloture. He doesn’t even want to ASK the Democrats to stick to the team on cloture. Alan Grayson is among the Democrats screaming at him to man up (I think that Lieberman, at least, should be brought to heel). Even if Reid wins reelection next year, how about making Schumer majority leader?

Reports say that in the last few weeks Reid has, in fact, started intensive talks with liberals, trying to figure out how to pass the public option, but hasn’t closed in on a strategy yet. He seems to be focusing on doing it in conference, which is risky.

So he wants it, to he's too polite to ask.

Lyndon Johnson wept.

Lacking such adult supervision, Landrieu is spewing nonsense about people believing the public option is free health care – I’m more interested in her stance on cloture. Conrad is stressing his opposition to a public option linked to Medicare – he’s setting himself up to vote for some OTHER kind of public option, which is a pleasant surprise. Ben Nelson says he will be a team player as long as his party doesn’t go too far to the left…which is where, exactly? Lieberman is a probable “no” on the public option, but again, what about cloture? He must know that even a very lenient Reid would have Lieberman at the top of the “punish me” list.

(On a happier note, Blue Dog Mark Pryor says he’s on board for cloture, and Specter urged the other Democrats to do likewise, although they were reluctant)

It was reported that Snowe will be invited to some of the sessions in which the bills will be merged; then Reid’s office firmly shot down the idea. Snowe is still selling the trigger idea; I don’t think she would be pushing this unless she was afraid that a real public option could pass. She dislikes the opt-out option. The GOP is not punishing her officially, although wingnut sites like Redstate are slamming her. But let’s all remember: if you pass a bill with a public option you might lose Snowe, but without the public option you lose the House of Representatives.

The rest of the GOP is doing the same old same old – lie, delay, lie, delay. McConnell says he wants a couple of MONTHS for debate, and the rest of Team Red is screeching lies about more gummint and more taxes – which they wouldn’t be doing if they had a valid argument to use.

Obama and SNL

Not long ago, the Saturday Night Live folks took a shot at Obama for not finishing a list of policy initiatives, as though he had to get his whole agenda done in one year. It is true that the Democrats have put some issues on hold until the health reform bill is passed but, to point out the obvious, that is only a temporary delay – the health care bill is coming soon. Once the bill is passed, action will move forward on all the other stuff.

Let’s look at SNL’s list of incomplete projects. They involve issues that will require some support in Congress – climate change, gays in the military, immigration (plus financial regulations, which I think they missed) – and a bunch that really don’t require Congress – limiting executive powers, torture, Guantanamo, Iraq withdrawal, gaining the upper hand in Afghanistan.

So here is what will happen.

When health reform passes, Obama’s numbers will skyrocket.

Obama will move forward on the issues that do not require legislation, such as torture and Iraq , and his numbers will go up some more.

Then he will move forward on the issues requiring legislation. Democratic legislators are already working on the issues noted above such as climate change, with vague promises of Republican support. Either the Republicans will renege on their promises and screech “FILIBUSTER” on all three, and America will react to this obstruction and Obama’s numbers will go up….

Or they will NOT obstruct, the bills will pass, and Obama’s numbers will also go up.

And so will the numbers for the Congressional Democrats.

Just in time for the midterms.

Rush Limbaugh, a racist? Naaaaah

Rush Limbaugh, has been officially branded as so completely racist that he can’t possibly function in business.

And this verdict came, not from some left-wing fringe website, but from the arch-conservative arch-big-business NFL. Limbaugh’s kind of people. And the anti-Limbaugh effort was led by Colt owner Jim Irsay, a big-time Republican donor.

I just can’t imagine how they came to that conclusion.

Could it be something he said?

“Native Americans are “injuns”; immigrants are an invading species; the angry minorities have the power now; NFL games look like Bloods versus Crips; minorities never apologize for their transgressions; basketball is the favorite sport of gangs; Gates is an angry racist; Colin Powell’s support of Obama was race-based; blacks can’t swim; the media wants the black quarterback to do well; the Democratic policy on Darfur is all about the black vote; Obama’s election was caused by feminazis failing to block affirmative action!”

…or perhaps…

“Obama is the magic Negro, a little black man-child, a Halfrican-American, more African than American who has disowned his white side and is going all-black; Obama’s whole economic program is reparations for blacks; Obama acts like an African despot; Obama and Sotomayor are reverse racists; Obama wants us to have the same health care he had in Africa ; Obama wants to be the black FDR; Obama hasn’t proved he’s a citizen; Obama is a black president trying to destroy a white policeman; Obama wouldn’t have shot the Somali pirates if he had known they were young black Muslim teenagers; in Obama’s America black kids cheer as white kids get beat up; the government has been taking care of young blacks their whole lives!”

Isn’t it funny how accountability works when he leaves the safe comfy confines of his studio and his enormous phallic gold microphone?

Republicans are now screeching that Limbaugh got the boot because he’s a Republican. Sorry girls, but a lot of the people involved in chucking him out are also Republicans. It’s not because he’s a Republican, it’s because he’s a braindead racist wingnut -- but it is understandable that you guys confuse the two.

Four things for Obama to do

1. Herd the Blue Dogs.

The two guys supposed to herd the conservative Democrats are Reid and Durbin, but now Reid is whining that he doesn’t want a bill that will split the Democratic caucus. Emanuel needs to slap him around and remind him that a huge majority of the Democratic caucus wants the public option, and it’s time for the other side to start making concessions the way they have.

Likewise Durbin. Senate Democrats rank themselves by seniority, but Republicans do it by party loyalty: this gives the GOP a huge advantage, because they know their troops will always follow their leaders on procedural votes like cloture. In effect it gives them 10 extra votes, the difference between 50 and 60. The petition to have the Democrats do what the Republicans do – strip the committee chairs of Senators who don’t follow their leaders on cloture – has almost 80,000 signatures, but Reid’s deputy Durbin has already said they won’t strip committee chairs. So he needs slapping around too.

A key thing to watch for is whether the Blue Dogs are coordinating behind the scenes. Nobody wants to be the one guy who kills health reform, but if there is a little posse of three or four, obstruction becomes easier – treachery loves company. So far, no Democrat has publicly expressed willingness to support a filibuster, but we need to keep it that way.

Another thing to watch the Blue Dogs for, is hiding behind Snowe’s skirts. They could agree to vote for a bill she likes, which could be good, but they could also refuse to vote for a bill she does NOT like. This is pusillanimous and they should be crushed without mercy if they do so.

People to watch include the Democrats who opposed the public option in the Finance Committee, including Lincoln who said her vote on the Baucus bill doesn’t guarantee a “yes” vote on the floor bill, and Conrad, who interestingly has stopped bashing the public option and now is only bashing the ROBUST public option, the most liberal version of it. Carper, author of the opt-in plan, is also considering the opt-out plan, and if he likes it he could also sway guys like Ben Nelson and Bayh who also like it. Collins could conceivably back the Baucus bill – could she back a public option too?

Now the HELP bill and the Finance bill will be merged; once they merge the bills and send the new composite bill to the floor (they’re shooting for the last week of October), the decision on the public option won’t change on the floor: it would take 60 votes to take it out, or to put it in. The people who will decide this will be Baucus and Dodd, who will cancel each other out, Reid who will defer to the White House, and the real “decider”, the White House. Obama wants the public option – Rockefeller publicly reiterated that today -- but a great deal depends on (a) whether Obama has obtained commitments from the Blue Dogs to support cloture, and (b) whether he really wants to go the reconciliation route. If the answer to both questions is “no”, then something other than a full-bore public option may happen. Obama will not allow a bad bill even to be voted on, let alone reach his desk, so that rules out the Baucus bill, the trigger option (unless it is strengthened a great deal), and the coop. Two other options might be: reconciliation (messy), leaving the public option battle until the conference (risky), the opt-in plan (risky), and the opt-out plan. The opt-out is perhaps the best option; even with 22 Republican governors, 13 states with Republican legislatures not including nonpartisan Nebraska, and 9 states that are all GOP run, few states would really opt out.

House leaders are maneuvering for maximum advantage, trimming their plan down from $1.2 trillion down to $900 billion. They are talking about passage of a House bill by Thanksgiving, but they might do better to slow down, wait for Obama to get whatever he can from the Senate, and then vote for it in the House as is, so that no conference is needed.

Speaking of the conference: Obama has clearly read the Senate rules – that’s why he slid the reconciliation instruction into the April budget bill, to open the door for reconciliation later. One key provision: according to Senate rules, if both the House and Senate bills have the public option in it, the House-Senate conference can NOT remove it. But it can still be filibustered.

2. Spank Lieberman and Baucus

Lieberman was saying that the opt-out plan is worth looking at, but now he is actually to the right of the Republican, Snowe, on the Baucus bill, and parroting the discredited insurance-industry talking points from AHIP. Keep in mind that when Bush was pushing the Alito nomination, Lieberman voted for cloture and then against Alito – if he is unwilling to extend the same courtesy to Obama that he extended to Bush, Reid absolutely must throw him out of the Democratic caucus. Lieberman may try to take the lead on repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, hoping to buy himself a reprieve by arguing that he supported his party on one out of two initiatives, but sorry, not good enough. You don’t get to be a Democrat only when it’s convenient. Thomas Paine called guys like that “sunshine patriots”, who flee for the hills when it starts raining.

Astoundingly, Baucus, after stage-managing the three-month disaster in the Finance Committee on health reform, wants to take charge of the legislation climate change and clean energy.

No. Way. In. Hell.

Not only do we need to keep him away from climate change, we still need to remind people why his health reform bill sucks. His formula for coops was slammed by the CBO, who said hardly anyone would use the coops, and it contains way too many provisions which leave us at the mercy of the insurers.

3. Watch for some fakery by the Republicans.

Don’t you think it’s a little odd that, right after sources leak the “fact” that the Republicans threatened to strip Snowe of a key committee seat if she votes for the Baucus bill, she votes for it anyway? Ya think maybe Snowe, who still disapproves of the public option, is setting Reid up for an impassioned speech – Oh, Harry, Harry, Harry, I have thrown aside my Republican friends for you! Keep the Baucus bill as is, lest my tragic sacrifice be in vain!” Then she clutches her pearls and flings herself on a divan or a settee with a case of the vapors. Reid is just the guy to fall for such nonsense.

Of course, having made this threat against Snowe, the GOP will now look foolish if they don’t follow through.

4. Keep stomping the AHIP report to death

The AHIP report, sponsored by the insurers, is backfiring badly; now that they have publicly threatened to raise all our rates, a public option is even more likely. They essentially made the case for the reform better than the reformers have, and gave top cover for some liberals who feared that the Baucus bill would be seen (understandably) as too far to the right. The accountants who prepared the AHIP report admitted that they cherry-picked the data, only looking at four provisions that are expensive. So it was all bullcrap anyway.

Preparing for the Copenhagen climate talks

Lindsey Graham and John Kerry are trying to craft a bipartisan compromise on climate change. Under the terms of this deal, the Republicans would actually admit that climate change is a problem (for which they deserve no credit), and that we should set up cap and trade, with the EPA empowered to step in if change doesn’t come fast enough. In return the Democrats give some ground on offshore drilling, nuclear, and the search for clean coal.

Apparently they (rather optimistically) hope to get this through Congress soon, before Obama (or his delegate) goes to Copenhagen to negotiate international climate agreements. As soon as anybody says we want this done before Copenhagen, the Republicans will do all they can to delay passage, and then brag that they forced us to go to Denmark with no concrete proposals. As we learned from the GOP’s caterwauling when Obama “lost” the Olympics and then won the Nobel Prize, Republicans don’t care if America looks bad, as long as Obama also looks bad. Attacking America’s Democrats is more important than attacking America’s problems, as far as they are concerned.

The other issue is – who are the Republicans who will go along with Graham on this climate change compromise? Is Graham just the new Olympia Snowe, dangling the myth of bipartisanship in front of us like a gold watch, in order to hypnotize us into making more concessions? I think Graham should bring some new GOP faces to the table before we talk seriously about running off and joining the “clean coal” snipe hunt.

And, Senator Grassley, you’re not invited. You already wasted two months of our lives with your footdragging.

Also – Boxer says her committee (Environment Committee) will pass the Boxer-Kerry bill soon, which is presumably close to the Graham-Kerry formula. They’re courting Graham. The House passed a somewhat similar bill in June.

As for Copenhagen itself, the developing world is making efforts to cut emissions – China and India on infrastructure changes, China on emissions, Brazil on deforestation – but when the world meets to talk climate change, China and India are going to want Obama to give them things in return, which will cause backlash back home: big emissions cuts in the U.S., U.S. investment money for developing countries, a chance to share in U.S. energy technology (exacerbating the intellectual-property issue), and a little slack in establishing their own emissions caps.

There are other issues which will cause trouble here in the U.S.: in addition to the inevitable obstruction from Republicans, there will also be the need to refit old buildings, build new ones the right way, build infrastructure, divert money away from recession-fighting efforts and development, and the need for legislation on environmental restrictions, verification and enforcement (to include penalties).

Creating and then dashing high expectations would be toxic both at home and abroad. The White House is reinforcing the notion that the Copenhagen talks are not at the head of state level, so that if it looks like an ugly disaster, Obama can wave off of a personal appearance without hearing the bipartisan screaming, to the tune of “so you went to Scandinavia for the Olympics and the Nobel, but not for climate change?” If we don’t have a climate deal passed in Congress, he is even less likely to go.

They also will work to lower expectations, and aim for a the establishment of a framework which would lead to a more long-term process: the Kyoto deal took years to set up, and a bilateral U.S.-China deal, if forged soon, could provide the framework for further progress. After that, though, Obama would want to keep the ball moving: it is probably not in his nature to approve a broad, vague conceptual framework and then leave it at that, particularly if his successor – from either party – might be less committed to making progress on this front.

Health insurers take off the mask and threaten…you

Insurers are making no effort whatsoever to dial back their worst excesses in the ramp-up to the big reform votes. Pregnancy, domestic violence, fat babies as disqualifying preexisting conditions, jacking up rates….These guys seem to be positive they can stop reform. Makes you wonder.

But their already-discredited AHIP report is likely to backfire. With this report, drafted at the behest of the insurance industry, they have effectively threatened all of America that even if the reform bill contains a mandate which will provide them with millions of new customers, they will still jack up all our premiums. This gives a strong impetus to setting up a public option, to save American families a ton of money. It also makes Pelosi’s windfall profits tax more likely to pass. Some are also proposing a cap on premiums. Even Republican leaders are warning their members not to campaign on the report if they have also taken a ton of insurance money for their campaigns. Watch the Blue Dog Senators on this – extortionists themelves, they know blackmail when they see it.

Meanwhile the CBO report has dealt a serious blow to the idea of health care coops; the only vote it adds to the tally is possibly Conrad’s.

The trigger option is less unpopular than the coop option, but the trigger won’t work either – Snowe tried, and she overplayed her hand. The Democrats seemingly have already conceded that many of the major provisions of the health reform package won’t go into effect for years, and they don’t want the trigger nonsense to delay things even more. They’ve conceded enough and they know it.

So Senators are back at work urgently seeking a public-option formula that can attain 60 votes for cloture, if not for the actual bill; then when Reid merges the HELP and Finance bills, they will toss out the Baucus coop plan in favour of the public option.

As the coop and trigger options slowly expire, the public option opt-out formula, the most promising of all the compromise proposals, is gaining momentum. White House polling possibly discovered that opt-out will sell, liberals will accept it, Krugman likes it, and Carper may support it; probably Lieberman too.

Obama has rounded up more Republican supporters of health reform, Chuck Hagel and Bush’s HHS Secretary, Louis Sullivan. However, Bill Nelson has said no to opt-out, and likes the trigger better. How about both? Or at least cloture? He’s undoubtedly worried that Florida could opt out. I think a lot of these Blue Dog knuckleheads are dragging this out forever, because once they commit and the Senate votes, they will deservedly become relative non-entities again.

And more justification for urgency: a new Consumers Union report says Americans are skipping doctor visits, procedures, tests, prescriptions, and even taking expired drugs to save money; a quarter of us have been unable to pay for medical bills or prescriptions.

The wingnuts are still pushing the GOP further to the right

The teabaggers are starting to attack the establishment Republicans from the right, setting up primary challenges against incumbents. We hate taxes, government, the stimulus, the bailout, TARP, Obama, Charlie Crist etc etc.

So the hard-core wingnuts really believe that America will swallow the Reagan snake oil once more, and are pushing the party even further to the right, to ensure that that snake oil is what the GOP is selling.

This ensures that the GOP will do poorly in 2010, and then nominate some loon like Palin or Huckleberry in 2012 and go down in a historical asskicking. Obama, arguably the best Democratic strategist in decades, will win more than 40 states if the other team has nothing to offer but reheated Reaganomics, more obstruction, and more scary escalate-in-Afghanistan-and-Iran gibberish.

So I’m kinda liking this wingnut strategy.

The wingnuts have even slammed Bush, McCain and Huntsman for insufficient dedication to the wingnut ideal. Onward, onward, onward to the right, as far right as you can!

On a related note -- funny how the Gods of the right become progressively more crazy. Drudge, then Rush, then Beck, then who?

The most extraordinary thing – Rush Limbaugh, the true leader of the GOP, tacitly acknowledged his exalted status by admonishing Michael Steele for going off-message.

If this continues to be a race to the right, the GOP is doomed.

And a bonus report -- the big wingnut website, Redstate, has now compared White House adviser Linda Douglas with Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi minister who propagated Hitler’s lies and organized Kristallnacht which killed Jews and destroyed their businesses. He also claims that the Olympics were given to Hitler but not Obama – untrue since the 1936 Olympics were awarded before Hitler too power.

Obama greatness, in the palm of your hand

If you want to truly measure Obama’s greatness as a president, all you need is 36 cents.

Reach into your pocket and pull out a quarter, a dime and a penny.

Hold them in your hand while you read the following paragraphs.

Obama’s actual real-world accomplishments in his first year – his first nine months -- have been nothing short of extraordinary. All Obama did was, oh, let’s see, he improved America’s image internationally, repaired bilateral relations with dozens of countries, stopped the torture and other war crimes, persuaded Pakistan to go after the Taliban, freed two journalists from North Korea, resumed non-proliferation talks, got rid of the unnecessary fighter aircraft and choppers, proceeded with the Iraqi troop withdrawal, stopped the idiotic missile defense shield, repaired U.S. relations with the Muslim world, boosted our forces in Afghanistan and gave them a new commander, ordered the closure of Guantanamo, and shot a bunch of Somali pirates right in their fucking heads.

And signed equal pay for equal work, signed the children’s health package, helped kids to get college loans, raised the bar on emissions, protected the wilderness from the oilmen, nominated Sotomayor, led the fight against the swine flu, passed the health care bill, stopped pharmacists from cutting women off from birth control, reduced the secrecy in executive records, and opened the door to stem-cell research.

And saved hundreds of thousands of jobs (with the stimulus which even Republican governors begged for), gave food and support and health coverage to the unemployed, reformed the credit card industry, trimmed the budget by 200 billion a year, saved the automakers, created a bonanza with the wildly successful cash for clunkers, signed the anti-fraud bill, got the markets up 50 percent in a matter of months (in part by buying up depreciated real estate), turned the corner on unemployment, stopped the slide in GDP, established the homeowners credit, got banks to pay back big buckets of bailout money, and cut, I repeat CUT CUT CUT our taxes.

All with the Republicans fucking fucking fucking with him every step of the way. Fucking with him every day, on every issue, with near perfect unanimity.

All while fighting the titanic health care battle, a goal which has eluded a century of presidents and reformers.

In all of American history, I can only think of three presidents who measure up to Obama, for performance in their first year of office.

One’s on the dime.
One’s on the penny.
And one’s on the quarter.

But Obama didn't ACCOMPLISH anything!!!

Peace Prize winners who didn’t earn it --

So the argument of the wingnuts is that Obama hasn’t COMPLETED his international efforts on arms control, Middle east peace, disengaging in Iraq, outreach to Muslims, climate change, diplomacy, and ending illegal kidnapping, torture and other war crimes.

So let’s look at the other Peace Prize laureates who didn’t actually COMPLETE the efforts they won the award for. There’s only one or two, right?

Well, count for yourselves.

1910, the International Peace Bureau, for their peace efforts. Four years later, WWI broke out.

Woodrow Wilson, for the League of Nations which collapsed, and the Versailles Treaty which was thrown in the trash by Hitler.

Aristide Briand and Frank Kellogg, for drafting the Briand-Kellogg international peace pact “outlawing” war. Ten years later: WWII.

Nicholas Murray Butler, promoter of the Briand-Kellogg pact, see above.

Arthur Henderson for not disarming Europe – in 1932.

Carlos Saavedra Lamas, head of the League of Nations, see above.

Cecil Chetwood, for not preventing world war, in 1937.

Ralph Bunche, mediator in Palestine – in 1950. No problems since then, right?

UN High Commissioner on Refugees, TWO awards for not solving the refugee problem, 1954 and 1981.

Lester Pearson, for not solving the Middle East problem, 1957.

Philip Noel-Baker, for not achieving international peace, 1959.

Linus Pauling, 1962, for not stopping nuclear testing.

Martin Luther King, 1964, before any of Johnson’s civil rights acts had been signed.

Norman Borlaug for not ending world hunger.

Willy Brandt for West Germany palling up with the Soviets who eventually collapsed.

Kissinger – sorry, giving this guy a peace prize for anything….Hahahahahahaha.

Andrei Sakharov 1975, for fighting Soviet totalitarianism, which didn’t end for another 16 years.

Sadat and Begin for not achieving Middle East peace.

Mother Teresa – her whole career was works in progress.

Lech Walesa for freeing Poland – only he didn’t. That happened years later.

Desmond Tutu for freeing South Africa – didn’t happen for ten years.

Dalai Llama for not freeing Tibet.

Aung San Suu Kyi for not freeing Burma.

Yasser Arafat, former terrorist, for Middle East peace, speaks for itself.

Jody Williams for not banning land mines.

Kim Dae Jung for not achieving reconciliation between North and South Korea.

The UN for not achieving world peace.

The IAEA for stopping people like the Iranians from building nukes? Hahahahahaha.

Al Gore for not solving the climate change problem.


Which takes us back to the fundamental question: if Obama's EFFORTS didn't warrant the Peace Prize, who else did, this year?

Liberal bias of the media?

The Washington Post and the NY Times whine that the Peace prize is a burden and a liability to Obama.

MSNBC, the Communist Network? They’re whining that people are stumped over the award, they’re dismissing it, it’s a disaster.

CBS is calling it Obama’s fake “Mission Accomplished” moment.

ABC actually reprinted a big stack of anti-Obama jokes about the Peace Prize, collected by a conservative activist.

CNN – waah waah waah, it doesn’t feel right.

If the media are shitting all over Obama when he just won the FREAKIN’ NOBEL PEACE PRIZE, it’s small wonder that these media clowns are also crapping all over the health care reform process, and failing catastrophically in their civic duty to shoot down the endless lies and attacks by the Republicans.

Obama wins the Nobel Peace Prize

The Nobel people cited Obama’s efforts in the following areas:

--Arms proliferation: after the Bush gang threw the ABM treaty in the trash and worked to put missiles into Eastern Europe before they were even proved to be functional, while also ignoring the nuclear ambitions of “Axis Of Evil” member Iran, Obama got us back on track to combat nuclear proliferation.

--The Middle east peace process: Bush ignored this critical effort, Obama got the wheels back on the tracks.

--Outreach to the Muslim world: After eight years in which Bush officials proclaimed Islam to be a false religion and that a “crusade” was in the works, Obama reopened the dialogue with the Muslims.

--Climate change: After the Bush gang trashed the Kyoto treaty and sat passively as their wingnut allies screeched that climate change was a hoax, Obama finally pointed out that unclothed state of the emperor.

--And fifth area which they didn’t mention, but which had to be on their minds, was the recognition by Obama and Holder that Bush’s reign of terror with respect to war crimes – Guantanamo, holding people incommunicado, torture – had to stop, and be investigated.

He also helped America rediscover, ya know, diplomacy. After eight years in which Bush strained U.S. relations with, literally, every nation on earth, including every one of our former allies.

So, given all that, who else should have gotten the award instead? Who has done more to improve the international situation? When some wingnut starts screeching about Obama’s award, you can shut him up pretty easily with that question – if not Obama, who? Give me a name.

Better yet – go through the list of previous Peace Prize winners, and show me who has done more to move the world in the right direction.

…crickets…

The international community has given the peace prize to three Democratic leaders in the last seven years: Carter, Gore and Obama.

The message is a thunderous rejection of the brain-dead, sledgehammer neocon foreign policy pursued by Reagan, the Bushes and the Republicans over the last 30 years. It is a message of bottled-up rage from all the nations of the world, that the foreign-policy half of the Republican platform is a disastrous, destructive failure. And that they don't really like Republican domestic policy either, on issues such as climate change.

Actually you could also add Paul Krugman, who won the Nobel Prize for Economics -- an ardent opponent of Republican policy, particularly on our 30-year nightmare of Reaganomics and deficits, and on health care, and on race relations, and on welfare policy.

Or, in briefer terms, all the world despises the Republican party. Including a lot of our erstwhile allies in Europe and the civilized world. Every time we elect a Republican president, we're shooting ourselves in the foot, on the world stage. Because all the world knows they're destructive morons.

What’s really sad is that there are wingnuts out there who really believe that Bush should have got one, for allegedly saving the world from al-Qa’ida and Saddam’s imaginary missiles. He wuz robbed!

So the Republicans are down to ten percent popularity in the U.S. outside the south, and they’re at about zero percent popularity on the rest of the entire planet.

Of course the right wing is going to be grownups and congratulate Obama, right? Hollow laugh! There is thunderous condemnation of the choice from two quarters: America’s right wing, and the Taliban.

The American wingnuts, and the Taliban.

I’m just going to let that hang in the air.

Oh, wait – the award was also criticized by another terrorist group, Hamas.

In a matter of days, the Republican party has celebrated America’s loss of the Olympics just because they think it makes Obama look bad, and now they are crapping all over the Nobel Peace Prize. Their buddy Drudge is whining – it's a mockery, an embarrassing joke….

After Michael Steele – the head of the party – slammed the Nobel choice, the DNC hit right back:

“The Republican Party has thrown in its lot with the terrorists — the Taliban and Hamas this morning — in criticizing the President for receiving the Nobel Peace prize. Republicans cheered when America failed to land the Olympics and now they are criticizing the President of the United States for receiving the Nobel Peace prize — an award he did not seek but that is nonetheless an honor in which every American can take great pride — unless of course you are the Republican Party. The 2009 version of the Republican Party has no boundaries, has no shame and has proved that they will put politics above patriotism at every turn. It’s no wonder only 20 percent of Americans admit to being Republicans anymore – it’s an embarrassing label to claim.”

Of course some in the media are working with might and main to spin this against Obama, just as they’ve been working furiously to damage his health care effort. The crowd on Morning Joe was at it as soon as the sun rose, screeching – OMG the damage is done, there’s no upside, he’ll have to turn it down, what a disaster!

That is how far the knee-jerk reflex at Obama bashing has gotten in the so-called liberal-dominated media: the man wins the freakin’ Nobel Peace Prize, and it’s A Bad Thing.

Nobel Prize, it’s a disaster.

I’m just going to let that hang in the air.

Ben Nelson is amenable to the opt-out compromise

Schumer and Carper talked to a “large number” of Senators about the public option opt-out proposal last night, and the plan seems to be winning Senate Democrats over in a hurry. Nelson already said he likes the idea of leaving it up to the states; this is huge because Nelson is arguably the Democrat most likely to screw Obama over on cloture. Wyden isn’t crazy about it (he hates the insurers so much that he wants them whacked even more), but I think he’d vote for it. A Baucus aide seemed to think Baucus could be persuaded; I think the Blue Dogs are looking for a way out.

Conrad said he doesn’t know enough about the opt-out plan, but he likes the opt-in plan and its author, Carper. Surely Conrad wouldn’t defy his party and support a Republican filibuster just on the difference between an opt-out and an opt-in. Conrad also voted for the Cantwell formula and said some good things about the Schumer formula even though he voted against it.

Meanwhile liberals (with a few exceptions like Larry O’Donnell and Firedoglake) like the opt-out because it’s much better than some of the other compromises being floated. Howard Dean has just endorsed it also.

And here’s a reason why very few states will actually opt out: the Finance Committee bill, and the others bills too I think, expand Medicaid eligibility, but the federal government doesn’t pay for all of the increase – the cash-strapped states must cough up more money. If a state opts out of the public option, they would get a bigger bill for those Medicaid patients, without ALSO getting the public option money, and they’d also lose the increase in tax revenue which other states would get by shifting people from tax-free health compensation to taxable wages. So very few states will opt out. And notice that all those Republican governors who condemned the stimulus money…took the stimulus money. So they’ll take the public option too – if they want to survive in office.

More reasons to be cheerful:

First, eight thousand people have already signed the petition to Harry Reid – any Democratic Senator who supports a Republican filibuster on health care loses his committee chair…Oops! It’s now 14,000 and rising.

Second, McConnell asked Bob Dole not to support the health care reform effort. Dole blew him off. Dole, the architect of the Kill-Hillarycare effort in 1994.

Third, the Baucus bill goes to a vote Tuesday. More and more nasty details are emerging about the bill: for example, the plan has an annual cap of $11,900, not including premiums. Also, hospitals are slamming the Baucus bill because Baucus made a commitment to them, that the percentage of Americans covered under the plan would reach a certain level. And then he broke his word. Once the Baucus bill passes, Obama and Reid will throw almost all of its key provisions, including the state-level coops, in the trash.

Fourth, according to the latest Quinnipiac poll, not only do Americans want the public option, by a wide margin – 38 percent of conservatives want it. Could the opt-out plan win some Republican votes?

And one word of warning: some folks think that when the Democrats try to get those 60 votes against cloture, the sticking point may be, not the public option, but the methods of paying for the overall reform package.

And another: Howard Dean pointed out that the public option probably won’t be going full blast until 2013, but they might need to give some folks, like seniors, an early “in”, in time for the midterms.

Wingnuts demand impeachment!

The World Net Daily demands Obama’s impeachment – “high crimes and misdemeanors' does not refer to a criminal act…Our Founding Fathers fully intended to allow for the removal of the president for actions which include: gross incompetence, negligence and distasteful behavior….For those who mistakenly hold the illusion that impeaching Barack Hussein Obama would be a simple matter of 'playing politics,' the founders fully intended that the impeachment of a sitting president be a political act."

Okay, let me write up the Article of Impeachment against Obama: violating Congress’s prerogatives by lying to them to get us into a war, blackmailing them into funding unnecessary troop deployments, defying subpoenas, using illegal signing statements and administrative actions, perverting the executive branch into a partisan political weapon, illegally prosecuting opposition politicians and firing opposition attorneys, directing government offices to spread dishonest political propaganda, failing to uphold Article II responsibilities by keeping or financial system safe or enforcing product safety laws, sending thugs to disrupt officials from counting votes while screaming “don’t count the votes!”, trying to convert the Vice Presidency into a fourth branch of government with no oversight, violating the prerogatives of the courts by defying orders to preserve emails and concealing evidence, illegal spying and secret prisons and torture, and keeping innocent people behind bars indefinitely.

Oh, wait, sorry, that was the Article against Bush. I’m a big silly!

Going back to the original Wingnut Daily quote, the “does not refer to a criminal act” bit is an admission that Obama didn’t really commit a “high crime” or any other kind of crime; too bad they had no explanation for how they were going to persuade Pelosi and the House Democrats to impeach, and then the Senate Democrats to convict, for “crimes” as yet unspecified.

But they’re wussies anyway. Their partners at Newsmax are calling for Obama’s violent overthrow, to “resolve” the “Obama problem” (I think the term they were looking for was “final solution”). And of course others are calling for outright assassination. Amazing.

Elsewhere on Planet Wingnut -- while we were all paying attention to the 30 Republican Senators who wanted to deny rape victims the right to take their case to court, and the Republican politicians screeching that Pelosi is an enemy of the Constitution who needs to be put in her place, we all missed the new Oklahoma law which will now mandate publicizing personal details about abortion patients on a website. The website won’t have the name, but patients will be forced to reveal the date, county, age, marital status, race, years of education, previous pregnancies, previous abortions – all which, taken together, wouldn’t make it all that hard for women to be identified, particularly in small towns. Just another effort to terrorize women, using taxpayer money.

The White House is finally beginning to lose patience not only with the wingnuts but their cowardly enablers. After watching the mainstream media report the wingnut garbage as straight new – dead grandmothers, brainwashing schoolchildren, the evil czars – the White House is escalating. Instead of just shooting down the lies, the White House is now going to smack down media outlets that out-and-out lie, or don’t bother to check their facts. "The best analogy is probably baseball," Gibbs said. "The only way to get somebody to stop crowding the plate is to throw a fastball at them. They move." This may have been prompted in part by the NY Times effort to “tune in” more to wingnut “buzz” stories – sexy is better than accurate, right?

a timely lesson in party discipline

From CNN's review of Bill Frist's new book:

Frist writes that Lott demonstrated to him that he was the "ultimate team player" after the Mississippi senator cast the crucial 60th vote needed to ensure a Medicare bill passed — even though Lott personally opposed the legislation.

...in other words, Lott didn't just set aside his personal views to vote on cloture -- he voted with the party on the bill itself.

Maybe guys like Ben Nelson should be reading Frist's book.

Five stunning developments

The CBO slams Baucus' coop plan, the Democrats have a fiendish plan to pass health reform, the Democratic leaders are growing some balls, the Godfather of GOP Obstruction on health care has switched sides, and the GOP wingnuts plan a revolution next week.

WOW.

FIRST: the CBO says the Baucus bill is so bad that people will turn down free money

As Baucus, ever so slowly, completes his work on the Finance bill, he’s just having a rough time of it. He is now facing attacks from his home-state Democrats, just like Nelson and Conrad, in no small part because nobody wants a crappy bill with watered-down coverage (Obama feels the same way). His troubles are not surprising when you look at all the people Baucus has offended: Rockefeller, the health care subcommittee chairman who wasn’t included in the Gang Of Six (whom Baucus isn’t even talking to these days), Wyden who was double-crossed on his amendment (Baucus gave the CBO the time to score his whole bill but not Wyden’s tiny amendment, which is bullcrap), plus angering liberals, Democrats, reform advocates….

Baucus’ bill may not have the supporters he needs. Some believe the Baucus bill could lose Rockefeller, Wyden, Lincoln and Snowe, although losing Snowe might actually help: if Snowe votes against the Finance bill, her preferred language (like the trigger) may not be in the floor bill -- the logic being that if she can’t even support Baucus’ bill, she certainly won’t be on board for the more liberal floor bill, and can safely be ignored. The whole purpose of the arch-conservative Baucus monstrosity was to win over people like Snowe, and if that fails, the Baucus bill has no further relevance: the next task is merely to figure out which public option can get 60 for cloture.

Things got considerably worse for Baucus when the CBO took at look at his bill. The bill will leave 25 million uninsured, and if there is a year in which coverage bumps up the deficit, coverage gets cut the following year.

And here’s the amazing part. The CBO didn’t just say that the coops are a lousy idea that will have no impact on the market (i.e. the entire bill is a waste of time since the coops are the whole point). The CBO said the market penetration would be so pathetically small that, out of Baucus’ tiny $6 billion seed-money fund for the coops, only half the money would even be claimed – people wouldn’t even take the free money to set the coops up!

Also amazing – Baucus doesn’t even realize that the CBO slammed his bill – he claimed the CBO score was very good news. Even in Montana – how did this guy get to be Senator?

SECOND – an fiendish, evil, ingenious plan to pass health reform

As we move toward a Senate floor bill, we’re seeing more trial balloons. The Wall Street Journal is trying to push the Carper plan for state-run insurance systems – each state either opts for a coop, a public option, or an expansion of state employee plans for everybody. Allegedly the plan would allow states to band together; they can’t, however, link it to Medicare rates, which would cost them a lot of Democrat votes on the Hill. It makes HHS the arbiter – regardless of which party controls the department. Ben Nelson likes the idea. Conrad called it “constructive”. Stabenow and Menendez could accept state option. Guys like Schumer hate it. Snowe also dislikes it.

Again, there are so many problems with a state-by-state approach. Coverage would be a patchwork mess, with good care in some places and lousy care in others, the kind of crappy plan Obama can’t approve. Some states are broke; most states aren’t equipped to run an insurance system; some states are run by Republicans who don’t want to do anything (so the wingnuts who want gummint to go away in their red states may get their wish); some states could just put up an “exchange” that is nothing more than a website, or an exchange that doesn’t actually work to get people covered, negotiate, collect data; and as we know all too well, all state governments are susceptible to bribes from deep-pocketed insurers.

So where’s the amazing part? A new scheme that’s floating around Washington – pass a public option, but give the individual states the power to opt OUT of the plan. In other words, instead of the Carper plan, which potentially would start with zero states covered and then go upward as states approve health plans, the new scheme starts from 50 states covered and then goes DOWN only when state legislatures and governors KILL the health coverage. This way, Blue Dogs like Nelson can vote for the public option (or at least for cloture) and then kick the real decision back to the state legislature, where the local legislators would have a very hard time voting to cancel coverage for all their constituents. Some worry that liberals might fight this idea, but that would be stupid and already Schumer, who knows an ingenious scheme when he sees one, said he likes it.

THIRD – the Democrats grow some balls

The liberals are becoming more vocal. The House bill will be quite liberal: Pelosi tried to talk the liberals down from the Medicare-linked public option to the negotiated public option, and even then liberals were furious. So going even further to the right in conference – say, no state-run plans, coops, triggers – won’t happen. In the Senate, Boxer is now insisting publicly that the bill have the public option, and liberal Senators are reportedly pressing Reid to commit publicly to putting the public option in the original floor bill (of course Reid might at least want to wait until Finance is done before throwing their bill in the trash). Democratic leaders are pushing the moderates to back cloture, and the moderates are beginning to realize that it’s a good idea to vote for the final bill even it it means a bit of trouble back home – because at root they are still Democrats. Few want to take that active step of voting to kill reform and destroy their president.

The centrists pull right, the liberals pull left. One reason why the centrists seem to have the upper hand in this tug of war, pushing the reform bill ever further to the right, is that people believe centrists when they say they could vote down a reform bill, but nobody believes any liberal threat to do the same – everyone believes that in the end liberals will accept half a loaf. That’s another reason why the floor bill must be right from the start: get the public option in the merge bill as soon as Reid has trashed the Finance committee bill.

But even if the liberals accept half a loaf, they can exact revenge later.

And that’s the amazing part: Democrats with balls. Senate Democrats are now talking openly about punishing Democrats who violate party discipline on cloture in the health care effort, by stripping them of their committee chairs. Baucus would undoubtedly be the first one to get tumbrelled to the guillotine.

And what makes this even more amazing? Joe Lieberman. Lieberman is already living on borrowed time. He switched from Democrat to Independent and even backed McCain for President. Obama still let him keep his job as chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. But now, when he’s not obstructing Obama’s health care effort, he is making ugly noises about using his position as chair of the aforementioned committee…to investigate Obama’s mythical czars. Yes, the word you’re looking for here is chutzpah. Or perhaps meshugenah. Right after we pass health care reform, look for Lieberman to be the first chairman to be stripped of his chair.

FOURTH – the GOP leader who killed health care in 1994 has recanted

The GOP argument against reform is leaking even more air. Critics are pointing out that the GOP is arguing, simultaneously, that the government must not be involved in health care, and that Medicare must never be cut, which are mutually contradictory. People are noticing that the biggest critics of health care outside Washington are people who (a) don’t understand the issues, or (b) are worried because reform means that their own government-run Medicare will be cut, so they’re not exactly die-hard foes of Big Gummint. And GOP leaders are beginning to realize that if the plan passes, they will be forced to show the American people how Big Gummint Care failed, and they won’t be able to.

But where’s the amazing part? Bob Dole! He was the guy who crafted the strategy to kill health reform in 1994. Of all the people who speak out for health reform....He is now saying that the opposition to Obamacare is rank partisan politics and that Congressional Republicans should STFU and get with the program. He even panned his own 1994 effort: “Politics took over, and you lost”.

FIFTH – wingnuts demand Obama resign in a week, or the revolution begins

The loony right is still talking violent revolution. The wingnuts have a new internet threat against Obama: resign in a week or there will be war. “Our Dear Leader and co.…leave now and give us our country back…If you stay, ‘We, The People’ will systematically dismantle you, destroy you and reclaim what is rightfully ours. …We are angry and we are ready to take back the rights of the people. We will fight and We will win. …Dead line for your national response: October 15, 2009…Thank you to all patriots who support our cause. … Be prepared for when the fateful day of the declaration of war is nationally announced.”

http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2009/10/07/leave-or-else-youtube-video-warns-obama/

Well, I guess the abject, dangerous insanity of Republicans isn’t so stunning, is it? So, four stunning developments, then.

CBO: Baucus' coops won't work

From the AP:

The alternative to government-sold health care, a proposal for nonprofit co-ops that would compete with private companies, was judged largely ineffective by budget officials. Such arrangements "seem unlikely to establish a significant medical presence in many areas of the country," they wrote.

They said the same thing in an earlier markup, I think, and for obvious reasons -- state-level coops really are a stupid idea. The only potential utility in such a proposal was to win over a single Senator, Snowe, and it may not even achieve that.

Who to watch in the next few days

OBAMA. The latest Gallup poll shows that support for health reform increased, and the latest AP poll shows Obama’s approvals are rising; likewise his approvals for handling the economy and health care. His approvals among the all-important independents is up too. Obama steps directly into the health care fray this week, Finance or no Finance: Senate Democrats do want Obama to steer on key issues such as the public option. But some of his key efforts are happening out of our view: in addition to lobbying Senate Blue Dogs to support cloture, Obama is also working behind the scenes to attract non-Washington Republicans to the cause. As a result, more Republicans are coming out for health reform: three former Senate GOP leaders, Mike Bloomberg, former HHS boss Tommy Thompson, and now Arnold Schwarzenegger. Buncha communists, right?

PETER ORSZAG. The White House team helping to shape the Senate bill will be Rahm Emanuel, health care adviser Nancy Ann DeParle, and OMB chief Peter Orszag. Having Emanuel in the room means we could get a trigger option; having Orszag in the room means a lean system which could win over deficit hawks like Bayh and Conrad. Orszag also said that the public option isn’t essential, and that he was okay with triggers and coops, so we’ll need to watch him to see how wobbly he really is. The GOP is watching him too: they demand that he be there for the Finance Committee vote on the Baucus bill, so they may be planning to ambush him.

HARRY REID. Reid is already beginning the effort to merge the two Senate bills; he’s not even waiting for Finance to vote anymore. Finance is delaying its vote, either due to Baucus’ glacial pace of operations as chairman, or because Baucus doesn’t have the votes to pass it. The Blue Dogs are demanding 72 hours to read floor bill before voting; I’m surprised they didn’t demand 72 years. Fine, gives Obama more time for arm-twisting. Meanwhile, Reid is moving forward.

CHUCK SCHUMER. Today we heard a cautionary tale about state-level health care plans, from the guy who ran the Texas plan. He said Texas tried to set up a state-run exchange, but it failed because because the plan was so small that the private insurers could undercut it and cherry-pick it to death, targeting companies with young, health employees and dumping the older folks out. The public exchange was swamped with old, sick people, prices rose, and it collapsed. Such cherry-picking by insurers also killed the systems in Florida, North Carolina and California . This is why we need a national plan, even if it’s just a coop, and we need provisions to prevent the insurers from gaming the system or exploiting adverse selection. If we reach a compromise on a plan that is a coop, but a national-level coop, watch for Schumer to be the architect of the deal, possibly working with Conrad.

KENT CONRAD The North Dakota Democratic party has passed a resolution demanding single payer, or at the very least the public option. It was unanimous. This is by way of putting more pressure on Conrad – vote with us or you’ll get a primary challenge! -- right after the Nebraska Democrats launched the same ambush against Ben Nelson.

RON WYDEN. Wyden wants to break the grip of the insurers. Wyden and other Democrats are furious at Baucus and Conrad for their obstructive behaviour in the Finance Committee. He and Rockefeller and Cantwell have been threatening to vote against the Baucus bill – perhaps they can force Obama to take a harder line on the public option on the Senate floor, in exchange for their acquiescence on the Baucus bill now. Wyden will vote for the public option if it comes to a vote.

BEN NELSON. A recent poll shows that if Ben Nelson supports a filibuster on health care, his support among Nebraska Democrats drops a staggering 17 points, thus paving the way for a long-overdue primary challenge. But Ben Nelson claims his leadership hasn’t even approached him on the cloture issue, which is bullcrap: he could still be planning to screw Obama over.

ALAN FRUMIN. He’s the Senate parliamentarian, and will rule on some critical issues once the health reform bill hits the Senate floor. He will uphold the rule that a conference report can be filibustered, which will put more pressure on Obama and Reid to hold the Senate Democrats together. He will probably support the notion that the Democrats, if need be, can overcome a filibuster not only by cloture or reconciliation, but also by leaving the bill on the agenda indefinitely, with nothing else on the agenda, so no other business can be conducted (the Republicans would try to play chicken and wait them out, but that’s a losing proposition). He may also have to rule on a tactic which the Republicans tried to use in 2005: the Democrats could threaten to use a chair ruling to kill a filibuster on the grounds that using the filibuster in such a case would be unconstitutional.



And of course THE REPUBLICANS; the air is slowing leaking out for them, and they know it:

Snowe is pushing to weaken insurance exchanges by forcing exchanges to allow any company into the exchange even if they have sky-high prices and lousy coverage like the existing firms. She is clearly not serious about either reform or bipartisanship. So she’s finally tipped her hand, and her influence will drop accordingly. Meanwhile GOP leaders are insisting that even if Snowe supports reform, it’s still not a bipartisan effort. As if anyone cares.

Earlier, the Republicans, on orders from their masters in the insurance industry, forced Democrats to amend the Baucus bill by adding an individual mandate forcing people to buy insurance. Now they are arguing exactly the opposite – now mandates allegedly are a bad idea -- in an effort to slow things down even further. Let’s just sit there and admire their chutzpah: slamming the Democrats for including something the Republicans demanded in the first place.

The conservatives are arguing, simultaneously, that “government can’t possibly compete with private enterprise”, and that “private enterprise can’t possibly compete with government.” Um, if government care is really that crappy, no will choose the public option, will they? You would think the Republicans would love to see the Democrats fall on their faces, right? But actually, the Republicans aren’t afraid that government health care will fail. They are afraid it will succeed. And if fact both of the arguments are wrong. As Bob Cesca pointed out, taking a private cab in New York costs four times as much as the public subway, but there are still more than 10,000 cabs on the streets – they didn’t disappear the minute the public trains began to run. .

Rasmussen, the Republican pollster, gets busted for lying again. At the same time, another right-leaning pollster, Strategic Vision, is also busted for cooking the books.

Fox anchor Shepherd Smith finally loses it and totally blows apart a Republican politician who was spewing lies about the “government takeover” of health care.

Republicans sucking up to the female voters again? The National Republican Congressional Committee just said "If Nancy Pelosi's failed economic policies are any indicator of the effect she may have on Afghanistan , taxpayers can only hope McChrystal is able to put her in her place." Another uppity liberal broad.

Limbaugh is trying to buy the St. Louis Rams. This guy is a drug addict who has failed in one field of endeavour after another, whose one brief flirtation with higher education was a laughable disaster, who only survives as a “pundit” because he never comes out of his sound booth where a real opponent could challenge his lies and his bullcrap, and who only has all those listeners because his company offers the show for free in many markets, in exchange for preferential advertising agreements. The man lacks the aptitude to lead flies to a pile of shit, and he’s going to turn around a team which is arguably the worst in football? And how could any black player possibly work for that guy? Or anybody who believes in labor unions? Or anybody with a brain?

Yet again, Republican governors who slammed the stimulus bill are now begging for stimulus money. As Kos implied today -- How about this? Any state whose Senators voted “no” on the stimulus gets no stimulus money. Call it The Hypocrisy Clause.

Pelosi is shooting for passage by Thanksgiving, so within milliseconds the Republican will make fools of themselves with a new wave of obstruction tactics, just so they can brag that they threw the timetable off track.

Only a few votes away from victory!

Chuck Schumer says that even the Senate Blue Dogs are open to the public option, and that the public option has 54 to 56 votes in the Senate (other counts are a bit lower). That also means that there can be, at most, only a handful of Democratic Senators who hate the public option so much they would be willing to consider wrecking their own party in order to kill it. And that means Obama only needs to schmooze a few people, to nail down the cloture issue.


First, the biggest threats to block cloture probably are:

Ben Nelson has supported and opposed the public option at various times and refuses to commit to cloture.
Landrieu refuses to commit to cloture.
Lieberman: I say, threaten to take away his chairmanship; he’s already gotten one mulligan from Obama and doesn’t deserve another.
Lincoln’s latest stance: she doesn’t want a government-run and government-supported public option; she wants something that is competitive and offers choice. She’s leaving herself some wiggle room: she’s the Senator from Blue Cross, so she knows all about how bribes work. So throw her a bone.
Conrad was pushing for co-ops because he claimed the public option couldn’t pass; he wants a deficit-neutral bill.

Nelson, Landrieu and Lieberman tried to set up a “Gang Of Seven” which sought to pass a bill without a public option. These folks would prefer coops, but who wants to be the one who kills the floor bill, wipes away a year of effort by Obama, and cripples the Democratic party? Who wants to be a pariah for the rest of their career, with Obama gunning for them? That applies even more to the next group….


Second, the people who should be “gettable” for cloture are:

Baucus, bruised ego aside, said he wants the public option.
Bayh – some people worry that he is a filibuster threat, but he said he’s agnostic on the public option (although he wants a deficit-neutral bill). Bayh still may have national ambitions, which a filibuster vote would kill instantly.
Begich, very liberal from a very conservative state; what are his long-term career goals? Is this vote the make-or-break on reelection?
Wyden was in on the Gang of Seven and he fielded his own coop proposal, but he voted for the public option once, and should at least support cloture. He is still angry that Baucus and Conrad deliberately sabotaged his (quite cost-effective) amendment on insurance exchanges: Obama can win him over by soothing his ruffled feathers and tossing him some amendments he likes.
Pryor could support the public option if it increases competition instead of eliminating it. Easily done.



Third, these guys are probably safe votes for cloture, but call them and check anyway:

Byrd spoke out for honoring Kennedy by passing a bill.
Carper, Warner and Bill Nelson have voted for the public option at least once.
Tester says he’s okay either way (public option or not)

So far most Blue Dogs seem to be ready to fall in line behind Obama provided that the final bill is okay with their constituents and is deficit-neutral, and perhaps has some discreet bribes, or something they can claim victory on. The Democratic leadership is already working to package the bill in those terms, so that it is attractive to the Blue Dogs and their voters, and contains some bennies for them.


Also, these are worth a try, at least:

Snowe and Collins? Some of the old goats on the GOP side who aren’t facing reelection? Who knows? The stupidity of the GOP stance on this is so obvious that three former GOP Senate leaders – Frist, Baker, Dole – support reform. Ya never know.


Obama and his staff are working the phones constantly, asking the Senators: what sort of public option could you commit to cloture on, even if you don’t vote for the bill itself? For any loyal Democrat, the answer should be “whatever my party leadership says”, just like parties have been doing for 200 years. That’s the price you pay for belonging to a party, getting to chair committees etc.

So the pressure is on. When Obama held his Monday photo-op with pro-reform doctors, the doctors came from… Arkansas, Florida, Maine and Nebraska. Party leaders are putting pressure on the Blue Dogs to support cloture. And the Nebraska Democratic Party is publicly putting pressure on Ben Nelson, demanding a robust public option, which translated into English, means “here’s a whole list of state Democrats who will set up a primary challenge if you screw us over on this.”

And the preparations begin. After all those phone calls to Capitol Hill, Obama will soon know what he can get a cloture vote on; and that is what will be in the Senate bill that Reid takes to the floor. It is critical that the public option be in the bill at the beginning, when it first goes to the floor, so we don’t need to climb the cloture mountain one extra time. Happily, Reid has come out publicly and said he will side with Harkin against Baucus and put “some form” of the public option in the bill. Of course Baucus has other things on his mind: his committee is dragging its feet yet again on its bill, and now he may have trouble even getting 12 votes to report out his bill. So we’ll see the Baucus bill passed in committee sometime in, what, February at this rate?

Until Obama and Reid finish working over the Senators and using the results of those discussions to draft the final Senate bill, the sky will still be filled with trial balloons, on both sides of Capitol Hill. Obama would like the House to pass a pretty liberal bill, for maximum leverage, but Pelosi can ignore the demands of the progressives that the bill must link the public option to Medicare rates, the most liberal version short of single-payer: some liberals say they’ll vote against a formula that isn’t linked to Medicare, but it’s just a bluff, and everyone knows it would never pass the Senate anyway. Pelosi will probably pass something looking vaguely like Schumer’s amendment.

Schumer plan is actually a bit conservative: it doesn’t connect rates to Medicare and it must survive on premiums – Obama could conceivably sell it to the Blue Dogs as the next thing to a coop. Schumer actually tried to make nice with Conrad, and suggested that Conrad’s plan would work if it was national, but Conrad told him to pound sand. Maybe he’ll sing a different tune with Obama holding a fireplace poker over his head.

In addition to national plans like Schumer’s, there are a number of plans leaving things up to the states. Cantwell is proposing federal money for optional state public-option plans; Carper wants federal money so states can choose between a coop, the public option or a state employee plan; Conrad also proposes federal money for state coops. The danger is that, as history has shown us, it is very easy for the insurers to go into these dinky state capitals and buy entire legislatures out of their petty cash, or game the system in some other way.

And of course Snowe still has her trigger option. Right now she’s realizing that she overplayed her hand just a tad, and that Obama is moving on, although he will still keep up the schmooze with her just in case – it costs nothing.

You can’t slap the “public option” label on just anything

Maria Cantwell’s amendment, which the Finance Committee just approved, is really an exchange, not a public option. States can opt out of the plan under certain conditions, it only applies to people making 30-40,000 a year for a family of four AND don’t get employer-based coverage, it still puts states at the mercy of private insurers which has never worked, and it still didn’t get Snowe’s vote. This is not really a public option, but the Democrats may call it that and accept it for now, so they can claim “even the Finance Committee passed the public option, so now let’s just fix it on the floor or in conference.” Carper and Wyden are also floating compromises labelled “public option” but they also allow states to opt out (Wyden’s language also in theory allows states to set up single-payer – neat!). Obama is lobbying Democrats to vote for the Finance bill, bad as it is, with the aim of fixing it later.

Reid is singing the same tune regarding the battle on the Senate floor, saying the bill will have a “public option” without specifying, even remotely, what that means. Likewise Pelosi is saying we’ll have a “public option” but we don’t now what form it will take.

So Obama’s strategy is getting clearer: pass something labelled “public option” in Finance, and something kinda like “public option” on the Senate floor, and then keep pushing things to the left in conference. When they talk to the House, it will need to be more of a public option than the Cantwell amendment: Pelosi already rejected triggers and coops, and is unlikely to accept a fake public option, either.

At least we needn’t worry about the Republicans anymore. Harkin openly admitted that the Republicans won’t even be in the room when the final bill is negotiated, which is unsurprising since McConnell and McCain both admitted today that no Republican will vote for the bill regardless of what’s in it. They had their chance.

We still need to watch the cloture issue: it is because of that that we are only getting Public Option Lite at this stage. Lincoln wouldn’t even vote for Cantwell’s ersatz “public option” – maybe she’s decided she’s doomed for reelection and is auditioning to be an insurance lobbyist – so Obama (or perhaps Clinton) needs to sit her down and tell her the rules. Likewise Obama let Lieberman keep his committee chair for just such an eventuality, so now Lieberman needs to pay the piper and back his caucus on cloture. This whole thing reminds me of the stories of the Polish parliament a few hundred years ago: they could only pass a bill with unanimous support, so they never got anything done. Now, with the Republicans stonewalling absolutely everything on health care, and clearly capable of doing the same on any other initiative in the future, passing legislation means perfect unanimity among the 60 Democrats. That’s why we need to (a) eliminate the filibuster weapon, and (b) elect more Democrats.

Don’t let these parliamentary issues distract us from the reality of this question: we can’t just support some crap with a “public option” label slapped on it. We need real public option, or at the very least, a good plan that is like a public option -- even if it’s a coop rather than a government-run plan, it must be national and guaranteed for all, which Cantwell doesn’t provide. The American people probably don’t even understand what “public option” means, but they will recognize a crappy plan if they see it. If it isn't going to be a public option, it's got to be a really good fake, a very close approximation.

The saving grace is that Obama knows, and said publicly, that he can’t sign a crappy bill: after all the sturm and drang this summer, the American people expect to see a decent plan that will help them. And Obama can’t allow a crappy bill even to reach his desk, because a veto is a loss. He can fix the bill on the floor, in conference, or in reconciliation, but even though he has three lifelines he doesn’t want to waste one – he’d like to get a decent bill out of the Senate the first time, without playing the reconciliation card. So he will start pushing the bill to the left as soon as Baucus’ interminable deliberations finally end. He is in fact involved in the process of drafting the floor bill, the first of the three stops along the way to his desk.