Public Option or Bust

We won't know for sure until Wednesday night's presidential address, but Duncan Black has it nailed for now:

[Democrats] seem to have lost track of the fact -- a fact Republicans understand and have been quite open about for decades -- that passing a popular health care bill will make voters love Democrats and passing an unpopular one, or perhaps none at all, will make voters hate them. The Republicans were always going to oppose whatever the Democrats came up with, I just didn't know the Dems would let them do that while also letting them work to make sure anything they came up with is really unpopular.

Partisanship is hardly the most important perspective from which to analyze this health care debate, but it does drive many in Congress. So, it's worth noting that, strictly from a partisan perspective of the Democratic Party, it should be nothing less than "public option or bust."

Without a public option, health care reform will look, at best, like the Baucus "compromise" plan -- an incremental improvement here and there, but more obviously a massive giveaway to the corporate health care industry, with little or no improvement in the quality of medical care for the rest of us. In which case, Republicans will get their wish; the Obama administration will be toast.

Which means, in the next election the "blue dog" Democrats in conservative states and districts will be the first to be thrown out of office. And, wouldn't that be ironic! A lack of personal courage and failure of vision leads to the defeat of incumbent politicians.