This morning's Progressive Caucus pronouncement probably would have worked better:
Today’s summit is an opportunity for Americans outside the beltway to learn about the best health care proposals. We believe the public option is the best and most effective proposals to reform our country’s broken health care system and provide affordable, accessible health care for every American and it should be included in today’s discussion.
If this [subscription only] hadn't been reported yesterday:
A critical bloc of liberal House Democrats has thrown its support behind President Obama’s bid to pass a health care package before the fall elections.
The backing of the powerful House Progressive Caucus, which is the largest bloc in the 255-member Democratic Caucus, had been far from assured.
You can argue whether or not yesterday's move by the caucus was the right thing to do in terms of actually helping people. But it's hard to see how it was the right thing to do if you were planning on having people take your public option plea seriously the next day.
Those of you frustrated with progressive holdouts will no doubt be relieved to see them preparing for a final push towards passage. But analytically, we all may also breathe that familiar sigh we give when we see the largest voting bloc in the House broker those votes so predictably.
Is it all for the best? Many think so. The observation here is just this: both progressives and the bill came out right where everybody thought they would, even though the members of the caucus were pushed aggressively to play hardball and change the calculus and the outcome. It lasted a lot longer than usual, though. If you're into recognizing incremental progress on health care, maybe you'll find room for recognizing incremental progress in keeping progressive ideas alive in the discussion.