Well, now they do see an opening, after Blue Cross Baucus and his fellow corporcrats joined the GOP in the Finance Committee to shoot down the public option. Most notable is the fact that if Baucus and Conrad voted for Schumer's public option bill, it would have passed (again, they say that public option doesn't have the votes, but that's because they themselves won't give the votes. But I digress.)
But remember that media proclamations of the death of the public option are nothing new. And neither are the apparent resurrections of the public option when the House Progressives and the grassroots (that's US) speak up and demand it.
Just remember a few things.
Baucus was never going to let a public option out of his committee. We knew that months ago.
And that fact becomes irrelevant once Baucus finally craps his steaming turd of a bill onto the Senate floor. The most important part of the battle plan for health care reform is to keep the process moving. Baucus has been a huge impediment - he's always been slow-walking this bill and undermining it for his insurance buddies. But once the bill moves out of committee, he loses control of it.
There are lots of other opportunities to get a public option put in the bill.
First, it has to be merged with the other health care reform bill that's already on the Senate Floor. You remember, the HELP Committee bill engineered by the late, great Senator Kennedy. That bill does have a public option and a great deal more awesomeness than the Baucus bill.
Then, the merged bill gets to be amended on the floor. Another chance to re-add the public option.
Then once it gets its initial full floor vote, it goes to conference committee, where the real action is.
And it gets merged with the House Bill HR 3200, and with it comes an army of Congressmen from the Progressive Caucus, and their allies, who will demand the public option in the final bill, and won't be dissuaded easily.
And if all else fails, there's reconciliation.
But we have to remember one thing. DON'T LISTEN TO THE CORPORATIST MEDIA. They're declaring the public option dead, just as they did week after week, bringing Kent Conrad to solemnly proclaim "We don't have the votes. (But please try my co-ops!)" then following him with bobblehead after bobblehead giving us the usual (and frequently wrong) Conventional Beltway Wisdom.
The truth is that the public option is only dead if we give up.
But you're not going to give up, are you? You're gonna call your Congresscritters, hit the streets, work with everyone from DFA to OFA to MoveOn.Org and get that public option to say "I'm not dead yet!"