Reply #35: I understod that

[Tom Rinaldo]

It's just that I know enough about politics to understand that the White House leaned hard on both liberal Congressional Democrats and non elected progressive leaders to rally liberal Democrats around HCR after the Senate version passed by holding out hope that we could all "work to improve the Senate version of the bill" in the Conference Committee and through amendments. This follows all the earlier talk about how we can't get single payer now but a public option will pave the way toward reaching that later as we work togeether to build upon it.

When Democrats worked to dampen liberal fury over the medicare buy in being taken out of the Senate Bill, all the talk was about how we could still work together to improve the bill, about how Obama would try to make the final bill closer to the House version etc. I didn't believe it then because I saw that centrist Dems in the Senate already felt emboldened, and sure enough there immediately followed ultimatums that only the basic Senate bill was acceptable to the Senate, and that was pretty much how it was shaping up outside of the final deal cut with unions.

There is a perverse consistency to this potential Democratic back up strategy; continued liberal concessions that alienate liberal activists, which is fundementally how we got to the point where we may lose the MA seat in the first place. The unions were the last to swallow the last set of compromises after fightijng hard for a tenth of a loaf give back regarding taxes on their so called "Cadillac healt care plans". This proposed back up stratgy for HCR should Coakley lose would yank back that hard won 1/10th loaf right out of their hands. Not a good way to keep friends and influence people.

And yeah, I unfortunately agree with your final obseraton.