The reason that President Obama didn't push hard for a public option in these final negotiations ...
... is that this man wouldn't vote for it:
(see source image if you wish.)
That is, in fact, the only reason that Obama didn't push for it: if either of the heads depicted here had emitted a "nay," the game would be over. Well, maybe not over -- there is the possibility of reconciliation -- but that is a path that can be followed whether or not this "foundational" bill passes.
There's one other thing to keep in mind:
Obama has not yet failed to deliver a public option.
That's right -- you can't fairly accuse someone of failing to keep a campaign promise when he hasn't yet actually failed to keep it.
I'm not going to defend Obama's claiming that he had not campaigned on the public option, which I'll charitably interpret as "I had not campaigned on making the public option a do-or-die element of my plan, thus giving a veto over the whole thing to people who would just as soon see it fail." It was, from what I can tell, "not well-stated" at best.
But the fact, is, Obama has not "not given us the public option" -- he has only failed to do so in his initial try, going in through the front door, because the front door was blocked by the above man with two heads, and that man was not in a negotiating mood.
So -- is Obama licked? No -- although if he wants the two-headed man to vote for the bill all the way through to the end, it is pretty understandable that he would not want to say so really loudly right now.
Luckily, there is a side door -- several of them, actually, for different progressive plans -- labeled "reconciliation." If Obama can get the public option in through the side door, then all of the criticism of him for not delivering the public option right now is not only premature, but counterproductive. (We need him to be willing to fight for this and there's no a priori reason why he wouldn't. Shooting off every missile in our battery at him right now might give him one.)
I've created a simple chart demonstrating how good of a bill we might expect to get as a function of how many votes we'd need for it. I think it's instructive. Believe me, it won't be news to Obama:
This is a very rough presentation of how things work. The individual placement of numbers along the Y-axis -- how good (measured as a percentage of "all we could want") is the public option versus LieberCare vs. SnoweCare, and how could a plan could we still get with any given number of Senators -- is somewhat arbitrary. Maybe 58 votes existed for a truly robust public option, although I doubt it. (Lincoln, Bayh, Landrieu, Carper, Conrad, and Baucus may have given their approval for a plan already knowing that Lieberman and or Ben Nelson was going to block it, making their support "lip service.") Nevertheless, I suggest that these numbers are serviceable, and that they tell an important story:
* you can probably get close to a good public option with 50 Senators -- with every additional vote that you need (Pryor, Begich, Bill Nelson, Warner, Tester, Webb, Hagen, Johnson, Bennet, McCaskill, Feinstein, Byrd ... Reid ...) moving the quality of the bill further down the Y-axis, and
* when you get to around 60 Senators, every additional vote that you need requires a substantial weakening of the bill.
Now, I don't know if we have 50 votes for the full robust public option, although I'm betting we can muster 50 votes for something pretty damn good. The point is that criticizing Obama for not doing what cannot be done -- getting that two-headed monster to vote for a truly decent plan -- makes little sense. Obama instead got those votes for ... exactly what we got.
(Note: I use the twem "monster" due to what heads are there, not due to two-headedness per se. I am confident that someone will take offense.)
We should be both satisfied and dissatisfied here. We got some good things in this bill. The bill should pass. But, once passed, the bill should be improved. Obama does not warrant criticism until he gets in the way of our improving it -- and he's not going to say anything about it until after this bill is passed. (If asked, he'll probably say "this effort is too critical to disrupt with speculation; everyone will assess where things stand after the bill is signed, in light of everything else we have to accomplish." Nothing ruled in, nothing ruled out.)
Once the bill is passed, we get busy trying to convince the Senate that such a bill -- of which many variants are possible -- is necessary. I think that we can kiss goodbye any names that appear above the blockquote above (Ben Nelson, Lieberman, Lincoln, Bayh, Landrieu, Carper, Conrad, and Baucus.) If you realize that we can only lose two of these votes --
Pryor, Begich, Bill Nelson, Warner, Tester, Webb, Hagen, Johnson, Bennet, McCaskill, Feinstein, Byrd, Reid
and that's assuming that we can keep the other 39 not named here -- you should realize that we have a tough task ahead of us. It is, however, an achievable task, so long as the President is willing to lead.
And then, when Volume 1 of the 2010 Health Care Reform book is written, is when it will be time to lean hard on the President to lead on the public option. Until now, his "leading" only made it easier for Lieberman to bargain with him directly, and that did no one any good. But once the foundational bill is in the sack, the game changes. And in this second round, we have the advantage.
It's only common sense, until that point comes, that we should not be pushing him so hard that he tries to disavow the public option. We're going to need him on our side soon. We're going to need him leading our side soon, now that by the revised rules of the game, the battle becomes winnable. After all, one thing we know about our President is that he likes fights that he has a reasonable chance of winning. So let's agree to push him, at that point, to get into the game.