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.

Petraeus overthrows Obama!

As I noted in April, the first rightwing attempt to overthrow the government was driven by an alliance of big business and army veterans. The Liberty League consisted of very rich men in the 1930s who loathed FDR. They included leaders from DuPont, GM, EF Hutton, General Foods, GM, Montgomery Ward, JP Morgan, the Hearst newspapers, Lehigh University, Princeton, Yale, U.S. Steel, Standard Oil (Exxon), Chase National Bank, Goodyear, Birdseye Foods, Colgate, and surprise, insurance executives. The group was so powerful that even New York Times gave them dozens of positive front-page stories. Prefiguring today’s rightwingers, they screeched that FDR’s policies betokened "a trend toward Fascist control," and “the end of democracy." Their aim was to use WWI veterans to overthrow FDR so the fatcats could put their own man in. Their first choice to lead the charge was Douglas MacArthur, but the veterans hated him because he had crushed the Bonus Army march a year or two earlier, so they turned instead to another general, Smedley Butler, who (luckily for us all) had the good sense to blow the whistle on these loons in Congress.

Compare that to what’s going on now. Rightwing leaders are trying to reach out to both the man-in-the-street wingnut and to bankers (trying to pull all the strands of the wingnut world together), screaming that the President is an enemy to humanity and will lead us to Fascism – he should be killed or overthrown, or the red states should secede etc etc. The Bonus Army has reappeared as teabaggers. They are involving big business just like last time, and recruiting ex-military like past time, and seeking media attention just like last time.

So what if they follow the 1930s model all the way, and try to get Petraeus to be their leader?

Like Butler, he would say “no”, because he has other options. Petraeus is reportedly interested in running for President, and Republicans are paving the way, setting up websites, pushing the Petraeus idea out into the political arena, trying to steer political debate toward foreign policy and military issues…Considering their other options for 2012, I’m not surprised they’re drooling over him.

Obama would have tactical options here. First, he would want to avoid putting himself in a spot where Petraeus can come after him later on an issue in which Petraeus has actual expertise, on Afghanistan or on don’t-ask-don’t tell – so Obama’s native caution would serve him well on military policy. Then Obama would remind people that, notwithstanding any fearmonger tactics by the wingnuts, our major issues right now are economic and domestic issues, which Petraeus knows nothing about, and not guns and bombs. Having Petraeus move to CENTCOM helps Obama: Petraeus can’t stray too far from Obama’s policy, at least openly; if he defies Obama publicly like MacArthur did to Truman he will go down in flames like Mac did. Also CENTCOM is a five-year job so Petraeus would have to quit part-way through like Palin, in order to run in 2012, which would look cheesy.

But keep an eye on Petraeus. Because the Red Team is keeping an eye on him.

Once before a general served under a president in wartime and then tried to take the White House from him in an election. In 1864, Lincoln represented the people who wanted wholeheartedly to win the Civil War, and George McClellan, erstwhile general-in-chief of the northern army, represented the people who really didn’t have their hearts in it. Originally Lincoln himself thought he was doomed for the 1864 race, but then the war news took a turn for the better and people realized that Lincoln knew what he was doing and McClellan didn’t. Lincoln won by 10 points.

Two differences between 1864 and a potential 2012 race: McClellan proved himself to be a weak military leader, a problem which Petraeus would not have. And in 1864 much of the South couldn’t vote.

In addition to Petraeus’ ignorance of non-military issues, there is the simple fact that government is a profession, and so is politics. Obama has proven himself as a master of both, crafting an incredible come-from-behind victory in 2008 – the primary/caucus strategy, the speeches, the debates, the unshakeable cool in tough times – and a superb tactician in working the legislative levers to get the bills he wants. Petraeus brings none of this to the table. The popular myth, going back two centuries, is that even an inexperienced, common man like Andrew Jackson, Abe Lincoln or Harry Truman can succeed as President, but today the job is too complex and it requires a competent professional.

Eight years of Bush proved that.

Have your cake and eat it too

There are plenty of reasons for health reform supporters to be optimistic. Hoyer is among those echoing Schumer’s sentiments – the Finance Committee was the most conservative and the most hostile to health reform, but the Senate floor and the House-Senate conference will be friendlier terrain. Recent polls show that Americans not only want better health care but are willing to increase taxes to get it, and that after two months of anti-reform obstruction in the Baucus committee, Americans complain that Congress isn’t listening to them. And here’s confidence for you: not long ago Obama said he wouldn’t go to Copenhagen because he was needed for the health care fight, but guess where he decided to go after all?

A special source of optimism is that the arguments of the anti-reform forces are getting weaker and sillier. Baucus is arguing that nobody has shown him how to get to 60, which is silly, while Lincoln is arguing that her constituents don’t want the public option, which is also hogwash. Those who argue for more compromise are dwindling away, since the Democrats kept tossing out their ideas and putting in Republicans to win them over, and still got not a single GOP vote. Americans, who enjoy reliable public water and public power and public highways and public sewers and public medical research and Medicare and Medicaid and the VA and everything else, are rejecting the argument that public health care is suddenly a dangerous idea. Democrats are preemptively shooting down the meme that somehow a 51-vote majority doesn’t count anymore -- in the last 20 years, when the Republicans have controlled Congress they have passed legislation with fewer than 60 votes almost twice as often, which also shows that Democrats are more likely to be bipartisan. Reform opponents wouldn’t use lame arguments if they had good ones – and this summer shows that they ran out of sensible arguments long ago. The GOP has been so nakedly obstructionist that even Bobby Jindal has admonished them to grow up and work constructively on the issue.

But the lesson in all that is that some of the shaky arguments have been made by Democrats: Baucus, Lincoln, Nelson. They may just be positioning themselves politically in case they do support reform in the end, but somebody is going to need to give them the “Are you a Democrat or not?” lecture. White House folks are already talking to these people constantly, but I think they need to start shifting to “yes, we’re going to try to accommodate your needs on the bill itself, but in return you better get your ass in line on cloture.” I’ve been calling this the “have your cake and eat it too” strategy – get Democrats to vote “yes” on cloture and then “no” on the bill if they choose. They could even try out the pitch on the ladies from Maine – Collins is a stickler for procedure, and she might be offended by the idiotic GOP claims that, contrary to the Constitution and 200 years of legislative tradition, 51 votes is no longer enough to pass a law.

Harkin is demanding that Democrats commit to cloture, and Crooks And Liars says there are 57 votes for cloture already (who are the last three? Nelson, Lieberman, who?).

And here’s the hole card (or one of them, anyway) – the Democratic Senators know that Obama can and will use reconciliation if he needs to. So the question is not…

“Are you willing to defy your president and your party, on a bill that the American people want, on a filibuster?”

…the question is…

“Are you willing to defy your president and your party, on a bill that the American people want, on a DOOMED filibuster that Obama is going to trump with reconciliation anyway?”

If the Blue Dogs don’t get the message from the White House, they might start listening to their constituents. Collins, Snowe, Lincoln, Pryor and Baucus are all seeing the polls from their home states – their constituents are much more liberal than they thought. The Maine folks want Snowe (and presumably Collins) to ignore their party if need be, and are cooling to the idea of reelecting her; the folks in Montana and Arkansas want real reform. And when the Finance Committee trashed the public option, liberal groups got hundreds of thousands of donations in a single day, a sneak preview of the kind of money liberals will use to destroy the Blue Dogs in 2010. Liberal fundraisers and advertisers are already targeting the Blue Dogs.

Other strategic factors are becoming more apparent:

Baucus’ absurd assertion that no one has shown him how to get to 60 votes may actually be true – the White House, which reportedly is leaving him out of the process of merging the two Senate bills, may have simply decided that trying to explain their strategy to Baucus was just not worth the bother.
The White House is still schmoozing Blue Dogs and the ladies from Maine – Emanuel is personally working on Collins the deficit hawk.
The House is working on passing a bill with a public option tied to Medicare, a quite liberal formula which will help to push the House-Senate conference report hard to the left.
Reid is cancelling the Columbus Day recess, which will deprive the GOP of a week to stir up town-hall trouble, and is publicly planning to start Senate floor debate on health care that week, which will distract Republicans by impelling them to fight that timeline more, and fight the actual terms of the bill less, just as they did in July.
The White House is preparing a wide range of legislative drafts, including budget numbers, so that whatever situation Obama finds himself in, in the ninth inning, he can slap the appropriate proposal on the table and say “how about that as a compromise?” Gibbs is denying that they are doing that sort of homework, but I think they are.
During all this, key players – Obama, Snowe, Ben Nelson – will keep their options open as long as possible, but eventually if Obama wants the public option he will need to step out and say it. A key thing to watch is whether the public option is in the first bill to be discussed on the Senate floor: if it is already in there in the beginning, they don’t need to get cloture to add it as an amendment. The fewer times they need to climb the 60-vote filibuster mountain, the better.

We are still hearing more from GOP obstructionists and Democratic surrender monkeys. Carper is offering a plan which would empower states to set up government plans or coops or purchasing pools – too small and weak unless the states can band together – while Cantwell proposes letting the states negotiate with the insurers, which has already proved unworkable. Cantwell may offer her option on the Senate floor; Snowe may offer her trigger option on the floor too. Grassley is already promising to fight the public option on the floor.

This health reform battle is going to teach both sides a lot about what will happen in the coming political battles: climate change, gays in the military, Afghanistan, the works.

Use the Patriot Act to shut down the Republican Party

In praise of the Secret Service --

A GOP Congressman is calling Obama an enemy of humanity.
A wingnut spokesman is telling folks to get more guns and take back America so as to prevent Nazism.
Another wingnut runs an internet poll on whether Obama should be murdered.
A rightwing website runs a piece calling on the military to overthrow Obama.

That’s, what, in a week?

Remember that this is a country that had three presidents murdered within 36 years. And none of the three, not even Lincoln, was subjected to the hate and vitriol aimed at Obama.

Time for a pay bump for the Secret Service. Better yet, pay them in accordance with how many threats the President gets – Obama is getting five times as many as Bush did. Because if Obama does down, at least one of them probably goes down too.

I’m thinking we should use the Patriot Act to destroy the Republican Party.

The purpose of the Patriot Act is to find and destroy groups which have a proven track record of working to terrorize Americans and destroy America.

Under that standard, the one group which should be shut and down and destroyed, its leaders put in cages, its followers put on watch lists like ex-cons and sex offenders, is....the Republican party.

Just in the last few years, they killed thousands of innocent people in the Middle East,
Allowed other terrorists to destroy the World Trade Center without holding them accountable,
Turned a blind eye as Iran and Korea built the nuclear weapons which could destroy our cities,
Threatened to endanger U.S. troops for political purposes,

And tortured innocent people and lied about it,
Set up secret sites to hold innocent people hostage and lied about it,
Spied on innocent people and lied about it,
Inflicted so much damage on our military that PTSD and suicide are skyrocketing,

And made America hated around the world,
Endangered a CIA employee by exposing her identity,
Conspired to destroy the lives of innocent public officials,
Undermined the authority of our Congress and the courts,

And destroyed evidence of their crimes illegally,
Put thousands at risk of disease and death after Katrina,
Made it easier for aliens to enter the country across the Mexican border and through our ports,
Risked innocent lives by impeding our government’s efforts to keep our kids safe from poison and pollution and unsafe products,

And allowed babies to be poisoned with bad baby formula,
Caused the U.S. financial system to collapse,
Sent thugs to disrupt the counting of votes in a presidential election,
And deliberately tried to create a climate of terror in the US regarding its new president.

And openly condoned and encouraged party members to commit or threaten assassination and other violent attacks against the President and members of Congress,
Sent armed goons to Presidential events;
Caused riots at events for members of Congress, so the Congressmen couldn’t do their jobs,
And denied the authority of the President on the grounds that he was illegally elected, encouraging the troops to disobey lawful orders,

And insisted the President’s policies are killing our troops;
Insisted that perfectly legal legislative tactics are unconstitutional;
Prevented Congress from functioning with endless obstructive tactics;
And accepted millions in bribes to block needed national reform.

Political activity and dissent, in itself, are protected by the Constitution. But what the GOP has done goes way beyond that.

Their actions have shown the Republicans to be traitors to the Constitution and destructive to the nation. The U.S. Code states that "whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States." By that standard, the GOP’s eight-year effort to destroy the nation and give aid and comfort to our enemies, warrants treason charges for the whole party. Let’s open the prison doors, free all the people who were thrown in jail under the rubric of the other great Republican success, the War On Drugs, and give the empty cells to all the loons who are screaming for an armed revolt against the legally-elected president.

Some of their leaders, Perry, Huckabee and Palin, have strong ties to advocates of violent secession – the actual dismemberment of the republic. Others advocate nullification – deliberate obstruction of the execution of federal law. So let’s keep Guantanamo open, and put the GOP leaders in there. Or put them in the same cell where we held Jeff Davis after the Civil War.

Obama writing his own health bill, just in case

Word has it that Obama has been drafting his own health care bill secretly, just in case the Senate bill turns into a Frankenstein monster. So he has yet another way to get in the win column. My guess is that his plan looks something like this:


The bill will establish a national coop which will be governed by members paid from coop’s own funds, and administered by private firms; getting its policy and financial safety net from HHS.

It will mandate irrevocable coverage, both public and private, with accountability to consumers and a “basic services” platform including prescriptions; it will prevent price spikes, adverse selection, lifetime caps, huge deductibles, and denial and termination of coverage.

The bill will control rising costs and encourage competition; buy-in will be significantly less than the 13 percent of annual income which Snowe prescribed.

The bill will supercede all preferential deals which insurers have with local governments and reaffirm the supremacy of Article 1 of the Constitution over Amendment 10.

We may never see this bill, but if we do, we can check to see how close my guess is. My proposed bill is not technically public option but it has just about all the features that people want from the public option.

What to watch for in the health reform battle

Yes, this post is long, but it is all important.

Here is what to watch for next.

First, watch for Senate Blue Dogs and liberals talking behind closed doors.

Democrats are arguing that today’s result wasn’t that bad – we got more votes than expected on the public option, the public option is on the march, it hasn’t lost any ground, the floor bill will still have the public option, and we have 60 votes for cloture and 51 votes, easily, for the public option, etc. The facts bear them out: the Finance Committee was a hostile environment for the public option, and the Senate floor and the House-Senate conference won’t be as hard. The timeline is still on track for the passage of a bill by Thanksgiving. Even Grassley admits the public option could pass on the Senate floor. The latest polls show that Americans still want affordable care they can count on, and the latest Kaiser poll shows that the public demand for health reform is spiking: 57 percent say reform is more important than ever.

And the big one: some Democratic Senators who haven’t yet endorsed the public option are approaching the guys who do support it, seeking points of agreement – these guys are looking for ways to vote “yes” in the end. So we will get to 51 on the public option.

A look at some individual Senators:

Bill Nelson is under pressure from paranoid seniors, but he voted for one of the two amendments today, so he is gettable.
Conrad voted “no” today, but he admitted that the Schumer formula comes close to a plan that can win 60 votes (he likes the fact that it’s not tied to Medicare rates) and much closer to something he himself likes, suggesting he won’t block cloture and could even vote for the bill itself.
Baucus claims he likes the public option, but voted against it because it can’t possibly pass, which is absurd; if we do get to the finish line successfully, and then he still votes against cloture and/or against the bill, his excuse will be exposed as crap. He can’t stand any more public embarrassment of that kind – his own constituents are furious with his footdragging.
Stabenow will work to push the floor bill to the left.
Menendez publicly slapped down Grassley’s lies on the public option – he’s on board.
Carper originally said he only wants public option with a trigger, and rejected the Rockefeller amendment, but then voted for the Schumer amendment with no trigger.
Snowe will be the belle of the ball as long as she’s on the fence, so she will stay mum; she wants affordable coverage.

Having Nelson and Carper publicly voting for the public option bumps up the nose count.

Next, watch to see which bill is used as the basis for forming the final Senate bill. The White House, Harkin, Dodd and Reid will cobble together the combined Baucus-HELP bill. Technically Reid is in charge of this, but he’s already hinting that he will hand the reins over to the White House, which is good. The White House prefers the public option in the floor bill, Harkin wants it, and they will get help also from Schumer, who is a member of the Finance Committee but also Number Three in the Senate leadership.

So a key issue is whether they will use the Baucus bill as their “chassis” to add or subtract amendments, or the HELP bill. If they use the HELP bill as a base, the GOP must introduce amendments to kill the public option; but if they use the Baucus bill, the Democrats must add amendments in order to add the public option, which would force some Democrats to weigh in on the provision before they are ready to show their hands. So a lot of Senators want to stick to HELP, I think.

Next, watch for any statements by any Senator, especially Nelson, on cloture. Something that Baucus is possibly confused about: the Democrats need 60 votes for cloture, but only 51 for the public option. Soon we will see more pressure from the Democratic leadership on Democratic Senators regarding the cloture issue: in effect, Obama will dare anybody to vote against cloture. The media will keep pinging guys like Nelson to declare on the cloture issue. Voting against cloture means defying the President and the party, and damaging the party; Obama’s gamble is that all those Blue Dogs will be satisfied voting for cloture and then against the bill, and that they won’t risk their careers just to block a popular measure – the public option. The trick is that Obama needs unanimity and the Senators know it. Note that no Democrat, so far, has had the balls to publicly oppose cloture. Which brings us to Nelson.

Ben Nelson says reform should have 65 votes, which is nonsense, and he opposes reconciliation, which is also nonsense because he supported reconciliation twice on Bush tax cuts (this is not a problem – we probably don’t need him on reconciliation). But the big deal is that he won’t commit to cloture. His recent statements could just be for local consumption, or he could really be an opponent of measures such as cloture on the public option, but doesn’t want to bring the whole party down on his head by coming out publicly against it. Ironically if he blocks cloture, he practically ensures the reconciliation option he (now) hates. Count on Emanuel to read him the riot act sometime real soon – how about a primary challenge by Bob Kerrey? Is he still around? Hold a gun to his head and force him to publicly filibuster his own president and explain why he’s doing it – to his constituents who want him to STFU and give them the public option.

Watch for more talk from Senate Democrats on the “have your cake and eat it too” option: Senate Blue Dogs can vote “yes” on cloture and then “no” on the bill itself, thus giving them political cover back home. Also, watch for Senate Democrats to do what their House colleagues did: put pressure on the Blue Dogs by insisting they will not vote for a bill without the public option.

Watch for these three provisions, in the floor bill:

First, a lot of Democrats hate the provision requiring people to buy insurance, but it actually helps them, because there are some Senators who don’t want to approve the requirement without also passing the public option, so that we are not held hostage by the private insurers.

Second, the public option will be easier pass if it has negotiated rates (Schumer’s “level playing field” option) instead of rates tied to Medicare (the Rockefeller way); that’s a weaker bill, but a more passable bill.

Third, one dangerous provision which needs to be removed: a Baucus-bill rule conferring decision-making authority to a group of state insurance commissioners who won’t defy the private insurers.

Watch for statements by key House Democrats on the House-Senate conference. In the conference, no bill could pass without the public option, barring a miracle, which should keep some Senate Blue Dogs from going too crazy.

Watch for Republicans to screech that using reconciliation is unprecedented, so we can spank them without mercy. The GOP used the same tool on social-policy bills such as welfare reform, student loans, children’s insurance, and digital TV conversion. Republicans are terrified at the prospect of the other team aiming this incredibly dangerous weapon right back at them – it only allows for 20 hours of debate, and it can’t be filibustered or clogged up with irrelevant amendments, so all the usual Republican implements of obstruction are out of bounds – but, what can I say? Turnabout is fair play.

Weirdly, Ben Nelson – famous opponent of reconciliation – said recently that health care should be done in two parts, the cost-cutting bit first and the extension of coverge later. That actually sounds a lot like what would happen if they chose the reconciliation option – one bill with the budget-y stuff and another with the non-budget stuff. Is he crazy like a fox, or just plain crazy?

Watch for anything the Senate parliamentarian, Frumin, says or does. This will probably be a futile exercise: he will almost surely keep his cards close to his vest, and even if he gives health reform sponsors his early opinions on key provisions, he can still change his mind out on the floor if the nature of the relevant provision changes.

Watch for any Senator speaking out on the notion of overruling the parliamentarian, because like filibusters, rulings by the parliamentarian also require 60 votes to override. Actually, for anybody to antogonize the parlimentarian by speaking out on this issue would be incredibly rash. But as we learned in the last several days, there are some pretty stupid Senators.

In the end, keep in mind – if Obama decides he wants to public option, there is nothing anyone can do – Republican or Blue Dog Democrat – to stop it from passing via reconciliation. We know he prefers the public option (as does most of America), and he knows that his presidency will not survive the passage of a BAD bill. And remember also – the Republicans must block the public option at every step along the way: the Democrats only need to get lucky once, either in the first Senate bill, or the conference bill, or via reconciliation.

Obama may be jumping into the fight earlier than expected

There are a number of places to pass the public option: in the Finance Committee, in the merged Finance-HELP bill, on the Senate floor, and/or in a House-Senate conference. Few people expect the Finance Committee to pass it: Baucus, Bill Nelson, Conrad, Lincoln and Carper are shaky, and even Schumer’s second proposed amendment, the least liberal of the three public option proposals, would have a tough climb. Firedoglake noted that the Chamber of Commerce is attacking the Schumer amendment but not attacking the more liberal Rockefeller amendment, possibly a sign that the fatcats are afraid that the Schumer proposal could actually pass. Even if the public option doesn’t pass in Finance, a close loss would provide some momentum for it.

Some staffers say that the merged Finance-HELP bill won’t have the public option either, due to Reid’s wobbliness; others said the White House would not weigh in on the process at that point, preferring to wait until the House-Senate conference. However, other sources say that Harkin will defer to Reid on the merged bill, while Reid reportedly will defer, in turn, to Obama – for the merged Senate bill, not for the conference later on. One source says that the merged bill will be hashed about by a White House official, Reid, Harkin and Dodd – not Baucus, interestingly. If a milquetoast like Reid goes into a room with Harkin, Dodd and, say, Emanuel, they’re coming out of the room with the public option in the language. We might have clues on the merged bill by the end of the week.

Another factor which will make it easier for the real Democratic leaders to toss out the Baucus bill in favor of the public option: the whole point of Baucus making all those concessions was to win Republican support, but now Republican governors are assembling a huge campaign to fight the Baucus bill. So what was the point again?

So after the merged bill is the Senate floor – another place to fight for the public option – and then the House-Senate conference. Some suggest that the conference was always the one and only path to passing the public option, but perhaps Obama could make it happen earlier, in the merged bill or on the floor. Adding some more pressure toward the left, 25 House Blue Dogs have said they will support the public option, making the conference a tougher environment for foes of the public option.

Whether the big fight is in the first Senate bill or the conference, the key, obviously, is that Obama doesn’t want to use the messy reconciliation tool unless he absolutely must, so he needs to get all the Democrats to commit to cloture even if they vote against the final bill (the have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too option), which means listening with saintlike patience to all their concerns – or he might pick off a few Republicans but it seems unlikely. Even if Obama is unsure of getting cloture, he might risk a filibuster rather than approve a crappy bill with no public option: even if he misses cloture by a few votes, the Republicans will get the blame for blocking something that everyone wants. Perhaps a filibuster and THEN reconciliation.

Behind the scenes the White House staff, the cabinet secretaries, Obama and Biden are lobbying Senators furiously, not so much lobbying them as carpetbombing them with attention. Susan Collins is a key target. Again and again they are asking the centrists: what could you vote for? They are acting as “vote whip” because Reid doesn’t have the balls or the brains.

There are those who suggest that by leaving his position ambiguous for so long, Obama showed America that he is being flexible and making concessions, and the Republicans are not, thus ensuring that the Republicans get the blame for any defeat. But leaving it up in the air so long has its risks. Perhaps Obama sees that, which would explain his jumping into the process during the Finance-HELP merge rather than in conference.