At this point, any time a Repugnant says anything like what Kyle says... in other words, any Repugnants henceforth "pulling a Grassley" should just get slapped upside the face and told to stfu.

Right now, it feels like Liberals are charlie brown and Joe Lieberman is Lucy.

We compromised, the conservative Democrats refused to meet us. It looks to us like they always wanted to kill health reform, they just wanted to be able to blame us.

The most important strategic move we need right now is for several liberal Senators to state that if any Democrat joins the Republicans in a filibuster of a bill with the public option, the liberal Senators are promising to filibuster any non-public option bill. It has to be very clear to Joe and Ben and Blanche that they will not have their cake and eat it too. They will not be able to filibuster a public option bill and then vote for a non-public option bill.

I guess the question is how many Senators are stupid enough to sign on to the Republican plan of "Don't get sick, and if you do get sick, die quickly".

Nice job on Rachel last night, Steve.

At this point the game has moved on. Republicans are irrelevant. They are just positioning themselves to take credit if reform is successful and to carp if it fails.

At this point it isn't about pulling the football. It's about seeming to support a bill that is going to pass anyway, but doing it in such a way that the minority can sabotage implementation through procedural trickery. In other words, make no public option the default postion, and create as many hurdles as possible to states before they can use it.

So let me get this straight. Olympia Snowe wants to prevent the bill from even going to the floor, but the 7th most conservative senator wants to compromise and vote for an opt in and the number 1 most conservative senator agrees with him? I am calling bullshit on that. They really do think we are as stupid as they are, don't they?

Lucy with the football indeed.

Opt-in is utterly politically different from opt-out.

Opt-in allows the troglodytes to fight their battles over and over and over (repeat fifty times) again, spewing their lies.

Opt-out forces them to defend those lies, but (thankfully) not fifty times.

Exactly, Th. I think there's a lot of ways Democrats could punish Lieberman. Does Lieberman have a bill coming to the floor? Make sure it goes nowhere. Democrats can shut down the Senate just as effectively as Republicans if they wanted. I think Democrats are probably playing a horsetrading game right now. We'll have to see where this ends up.

Question: How would states opt out? Would it be up to governors or state legislatures?

Nice post, Steve, but did you really have to mix together two different pop culture allusions (Peanuts and the Wizard of Oz) in the title?

The No Reform party up to its old tricks again, I see. Hmmm....

offer the appearance of bipartisanship without really meaning it. Check

delay reform both currently and indefinitely into the future if their opt-in succeeds. Check and Check.

paint the party with an actual agenda for fixing America as unreasonable for balking on a seemingly (to the public) minor point . Check.

play media and polling games without having to actually do any work. (Very important) Check.

Yep, that sounds about right. Clearly the minority is getting concerned about the legislation that supposedly died this summer after real Americans found out what was in it.

Tempered, could you please direct me to an actual reform party? I see two No Reform parties. I do not see any party that actually wants to change anything in any way that might actually matter.

soullite,

As I'm not a policy wonk and the proposed legislation isn't in its final form, I can't say as to how effective it will or won't be. Are you suggesting the proposed reform lacks any merit? Because if so, I think you very much have your head up your ass. Aside from a handful of moderate republicans (called blue dogs and their senate counterparts)that infiltrated democratic ranks when the bat-shit crazy party drifted hard right, most democrats are supportive of needed changes and a good many are demanding meaningful reform. We wouldn't be to this point if they weren't.

Please don't suggest that the party that sat on a two term presidency, with 6 years of congressional majorities, attempting nothing except one unnecessary war, permanent tax cuts, deregulation, social security privatization, and education reform in name only is equivalent to the democratic party.

It occurs to me that opt in is even better than opt out because the Public Option needs a healthy risk pool to do well, and the sickest people in America live in Red States like South Carolina where we can trust Mark Sanford to not opt in, leaving all those unhealthy people out of the pool.

Please don't suggest...is equivalent to the democratic party.

tempered optimism, with soullite, that's not a bug, that's a feature. Purity trolls demand purity, dammit!

What is your point here?

If they have to weaken the opt-in to an opt-out to get the votes to bring things to the senate floor, so what?

The democrats are slowly moving the bill forward, eliminating remaining procedural obstacles one by one. They change the bill just enough each time to get it past the next obstacle and then change it back as much as possible.

Thats what happened in the Finance Committee. They patched together a bill with an impossibly low subsidy level, no public option, and strange cost distributions so the final cost would be low enough to allow conservative Dems and at least one Republican to vote for it. The bill was designed primarily to pass the Finance Committee. Once it did, they bolted the public option right back on for the speaker's bill.

We control this process. The next hurdle is simply getting the bill to the senate floor. Once that is accomplished, the bill can be revised if necessary in reconciliation. So long as the general elements we desire are in both the House and the Senate version, we can pick and choose the best version for the overall bill.

Furthermore, who the hell cares about opt-in versus opt-out? California, New York, Minnesota, Illinois, and most of New England will probably opt in right away. They'll represent over 60 million consumers. Other states will opt in when they see how successful the plan is. Changing opt-out to opt-in is exactly the kind of symbolic but meaningless concession perfect for bringing the bill to the senate floor.

Single payer not even on there, Steve?

Shame on you.

I think the Democratic Caucus needs to take Joe LIEberman into a closed room and tell him if he votes for a filibuster he's dead to them.

Not only no chairmanship, but total shunning. No support for any bill he introduces, everyone walks out of any committee room every time he opens his mouth, even if it's to yawn or sneeze. No invitations to parties. No campaign contributions. And no more support when he loses a primary.

My PERSONAL suspicion is that he's playing a trading game behind the scenes, perhaps to get the Administration to back down on settlements in the West Bank.