The newest meme among firebaggers? Obama and the Democrats never wanted the public option and are actively working against it. Glenn Greenwald leads the charge, claiming that
all year long, they insisted that the White House and a majority of Democratic Senators vigorously supported a public option, but the only thing oh-so-unfortunately preventing its enactment was the filibuster: sadly, we have 50 but not 60 votes for it, they insisted. Democratic pundits used that claim to push for “filibuster reform,” arguing that if only majority rule were required in the Senate, then the noble Democrats would be able to deliver all sorts of wonderful progressive reforms that they were truly eager to enact but which the evil filibuster now prevents. In response, advocates of the public option kept arguing that the public option could be accomplished by reconciliation — where only 50 votes, not 60, would be required — but Obama loyalists scorned that reconciliation proposal, insisting (at least before the Senate passed a bill with 60 votes) that using reconciliation was Unserious, naive, procedurally impossible, and politically disastrous.
Greenwald is drawing a caricature from the projections of his own mind. Obama loyalists “scorning” reconciliation proposals, for example, is a ludicrous image in a world where most Americans get their insurance through employers; exchanges, mandates, preexisting conditions, and lifetime caps simply don’t qualify under Senate reconciliation rules. Don’t argue with me, argue with the Senate parliamentarian.
Greenwald isn’t being naive, just thick. Like too many progressives he has latched onto the public option as if it were the “real” reform when it’s more akin to the candle on a birthday cake. For months he pushed the (wrong) idea that the entire cake could fit through a finger-sized hole; now he’s doubling-down, eager to see the cake burned up along with the candle.
Of course, yesterday we learned that Nancy Pelosi (“with sadness”) is unwilling to sacrifice the entire cake for that candle:
Pelosi, however, put the onus back on the Senate, saying that the chamber didn’t have the votes needed for it.
“I’m not having the Senate, which didn’t have a public option in its bill, put any of that on our doorstep,” she said. “It did not prevail. What we will have in reconciliation will be something that is agreed upon, House and Senate, that they can pass and we can pass… It isn’t in there because they don’t have the votes.” (Emphasis mine)
Pelosi is part of Greenwald’s conspiracy, I suppose. While this means she isn’t going to offer a public option now as part of the reconciliation package, it doesn’t mean the public option is dead — far from it. Good ideas never really die. It’s just not in this bill. It can always come later. You know, if the whip count gets to fifty. Indeed, just look at Alan Grayson’s Medicare buy-in proposal.
The problem here, I think, is that Greenwald and company live under the misconception that there can be only one bill. Even if the current health care reform bill passed with a public option tomorrow, reform still wouldn’t be over. Yet the same people who roared in anger at every real or perceived setback along the way are now drawing Beckian chalkboard-diagrams to tell us the fix was always in, that Teh Evil Plan™ was to raise progressive hopes and dash them.
To what end is unclear, but I’m sure Greenwald has an answer involving Rahm Emanuel. Good thing the firebaggers are a marginal group.
