The public option campaign has long passed the point where it is serving any useful purpose. It's time to take a break and do something else, when the very campaign has become self-defeating.
The supporters of a public option have worked long and hard to win approval for a robust public option. Unfortunately, it is now unfortunately clear that they have lost for now. The votes in the Senate simply are not there, and no amount of phone calls is going to get those votes at this time Reconciliation also seems unlikely to work, and it is also clear, in any case, that the Senate is not going to use reconciliation to vote for a public option at this time.
The public option backers are operating under the assumption that working and working and working will serve the interests of a public option, but that logic is questionable. Effort can be counter-productive in some cases, and this is one of those times where the very public effort to pass a piece of legislation increases opposition to that legislation where it most counts—in the Senate.
We have the spectacle of Senator Lieberman claiming that Representative Anthony Wiener’s enthusiasm for expanding Medicaire played a key role in Lieberman’s decision to oppose Medicaire expansion. (http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/72403-weiner-dispels-notion-that-he-inspired-liebe
rmans-stance-against-medicare-buy-in-) Lieberman’s motives and logic are both suspect, but all of the noise and pressure seems to have only emboldened Lieberman.
We have witnessed another kind of spectacle as well where progressive backers of the public option have developed such a mono-mania about this single item that they are willing to destroy the extension of health insurance to tens of millions of Americans. If you kill health insurance reform because of the public option you will get neither, and based on nearly a century’s history of failure you won’t get either again any time. That is a lot to answer for.
If you really want the public option, stop posting essentially the same diaries with the same arguments and reflexively jamming them onto the recommended list. Stop with the phone calls that seem to have no effect whatsoever on any of the Senators who votes matter. Take a break: garden, read a book, go to the movies, play a board game, run, ski, go for a bike ride, go to a museum, listen to some music, play with your cat or dog, or frankly do anything else that does not involve talking about the public option. If you really want to support the public option stop talking about it for now.
In answer to one inevitable response, you may find after a pause of six months that you can come up with an effective strategy to build support for a public option to add on to the new health insurance exchanges.