Ding! Ding! Ding! By: Mark W Adams

Kinda fed up with liberal purity tests lately.  The facts of politics is about counting votes. What is possible can be accomplished, the impossible takes longer.

While I am well aware that the White House is not pushing for the public option at all, I am still not willing to call it bad faith just yet.  This is because no one has proven that there are 216 votes in the House for a reconciliation "fix" to the Senate health reform bill that includes a negotiated rates public option.  There were 220 proven votes in the House back in November, but since that time three "yes" votes are no longer around, and an undetermined group of Stupak voters has also been lost.

It's pure speculation, sheer wishful thinking to insist that Obama "derailed" or "sold out" the public option because he didn't put even more of his political capital on the line to turn nay votes into ayes without an informed guess that it would have made a damn bit of difference.  We never really had 60 vites in the Senate and there are a lot of red district Dems on the line every two years.  That's just the way it works.

That doesn't mean it's dead, just a Zombie. If we don't pass a comprehensive bill upon which to build, we've lost the chance for another generation. I've seen it pissed away twice in my lifetime so far, not again. We lose the public option, we only have to wait an election cycle or two as long as there's a foundation to improve.

Without something psssed on health care, the Democrats (and any smidgin of liberalism) will get crushed in November. With it, we've got something to fight with, something to rally around, "more and better."