Matt Taibbi says that Rahm Emanuel's health care debacle could be to the Obama administration what the Iraq war was to George Bush.
He's right.
Matt says that progressives in the House might not vote for a bill that does not have a public option. If that's true, it's because of external pressure, not internal resolve. They were dragged kicking and screaming to that position. They knew -- as we did -- in late June that co-ops were going to be fobbed off as a "public plan." They did not want to publicly commit to draw a line in the sand.
June 15: Max Baucus announces his "co-op" plan, which was quite obviously developed to substitute for the public plan. Jerrold Nadler rightly calls it a "fake public plan."
June 23: We announce our whip count effort to get members of Congress to pledge to vote against any health care bill without a strong public plan. "The American public is on our side, and they need to know that Kent Conrad's co-op plan is just kabuki."
June 24: Leaders of the Quad Caucus come together to say that they represent 117 members of the House who will vote against any health care bill that does not have a robust public option. But when readers call the offices of individual members, nobody will confirm this. We're told by Hill staffers that they believe naming no names makes this stronger, and they're angry at us for calling attention to the weakness of their strategy to hide under the umbrella of the caucus.
July 1: Donna Edwards, someone that the online community raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for in her two runs for the House, who campaigned on health care reform, won't return my emails or calls for 10 days, so I write about it.
July 9: Lynn Woolsey says she's got 60 votes who will vote against any bill that doesn't have a public option. I wrote that "if Lynn Woolsey's got 60 votes, I've got leprechauns in my laundry room." Having been through the supplemental battle and knowing the value of having those commitments be public, I said if she had them, she should name them.
June 9: When progressive members of congress simply will not answer our questions or those of their constituents about what they'll do if there's no public plan in the final bill, we hire Mike Stark to go up on Capitol Hill and confront them with a simple question: will you or won't you commit to voting against a bill that does not have a strong public option?
Continued>>>
http://campaignsilo.firedoglake.com/2009/08/20/if-progressive-members-of-the-house-think-well-accept-co-ops-as-public-plan-think-again/
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