Did you see Keith tonight? he did a segment with Lawrence O'Donnell, who provided some very cogent analysis of the Nancy Pelosi squishiness on the public option.
I didn't like what he said -- I don't like his outcome... but he has a history in the Senate committees and his scenario for how it'll all turnout sounds spot-on.
Sorry I can't put it here.. I don't think the segment's up - and really, I don't know how. I know, I have to learn...
Here's a paraphrase of O'Donnell's salient points:
The dems on the hill are playing with a 90's playbook (that's where he had me). The last time health reform was tried there wasn't an internet -- and in those days the dems NEVER worried about where the Left would go if they did something the Left didn't like (like jettisoning the public option) because they felt -- and feel now -- that the Left has nowhere to go BUT to the dems.
SO -- Pelosi will eventually go to her progressives -- they'll write off the blue dogs -- and say I fought even harder than the President for a public option. And charley Wrangel -- who's a key committee chairman -- will say, "well, we have to have a bill" because, O'Donnell says that's what chairmen do. The whole voting bloc will fall into line, O'Donnell says, and that's how they work out the math. He's not even sure the public option will survive a first house vote and make it to conference with the Senate.
He wrapped it up by saying that's the way things have always been done. he added, when it happens that way this time, the explosion on the internet is going to be something none of us has ever seen. He says the entire Hill is looking at this with the Clinton playbook.
you know, THAT'S the reason I supported Obama in the primaries in the first place. I was sure Hillary would fight the last war with the last war's weapons. now, how do we change things?? (That's, in effect, what Keith said to close out the segment?)