(I'm not just talking about the Baucus/GOP-rape -of-America bill, but ANY bill that does not provide an opportunity for EVERY AMERICAN to opt in to a robust public plan - - - an affordable public plan based upon Medicare provider rates.)
Will Nancy Pelosi eventually, as
Lawrence O'Donnell tells Keith Olbermann, succeed once again, when push comes to shove, in getting progressives to enable corporatist legislation?
And that is the formula that they're using this time. Nancy Pelosi firmly believes that when the moment comes she can gather her caucus together and tell them that she fought harder for the public option than Barack Obama did, than Harry Reid did, than any senator did, no one fought harder for it than Nancy Pelosi, and she is now telling her troops
they're gonna have to go forward without it. That moment is going to come.OLBERMANN: But there's still a calculation in the other direction here that doesn't add up either. Assuming no Republican votes in the House, the speaker can only afford to lose 38 Democrats. Twenty-three Blue Dogs said they will not vote for the bill as it now stands. But there's 60 to 100 Democratic members - progressives - who might bolt without a public option. Doesn't both sets of math fail her?
O'DONNELL: They do, but she believes is, and
what she believes, and what they always believe in the Democratic Party, is that when it comes down to the actual legislating moment, they will get those hundred liberals in the house to go along with this more centrist position. They'll give up on the Blue Dogs and they'll simply talk to that 60-100 voters on the left in the House to be on board with this and be on board with this President and
it will work, because it always works.OLBERMANN: Is it going to work this time?
O'DONNELL: I don't see how it wouldn't work. If Nancy Pelosi gets it to the point that where the only way to get this through is without the public option, and she gathers her caucus together and she tells them that in one of those 'hold-hands prayer meetings,' in effect. And Charlie Rangel, who's been very strong on this, and Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee stands up and says we've got to do it this way, because that's what chairmen always do - chairmen want to get a bill in the end and they will basically hold hands and say 'let's do it this way.'
. . . .
OLBERMANN: Alright, well, we'll see what the Internet can do to change the equation, but I think
we're still going to have to meet at the barricades one way or the other.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x367838 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwqsUdmW9hQWill we rise to the occasion?
Or will our party beget a more massive package of CORPORATE WELFARE than the GOP was ever capable of passing - - - a mandatory-private-insurance, no-public-option corporatist we dream, dressed up in the rhetoric of "reform"?
Is it conceivable for our Democratic Party to beget he mother of all corporate bait-and-switch scams?
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