The Wrong Kind of Pressure from Obama?

By David Sirota, Open Left
Posted on September 16, 2009, Printed on November 27, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/http://www.openleft.com/142696/

In my post earlier today, I suggested that if the president wanted to pass legislation, rather than just be a famous person, he would probably need to do the hard, unglamorous work of, ya know, trying to pass legislation. That is, he'd have to start pressuring senators to pass specific legislation. I suggested that with House Democrats taking a progressive pro-public-option stance on health care, and with 60 votes not there for a non-public-option bill in the Senate, a straightforward path would be for him to specifically pressure public option opponents to relent.

The good news is that the president seems to be starting to get serious about legislating. The bad news, as Jane Hamsher notes, is that he may be getting serious specifically about pressuring Democrats to drop the public option.

We'll see what comes of the White House meeting with Sen. Jay Rockefeller. Maybe the president is listening to Rockefeller and is going to come around to his position. I sure hope that's the case (and if it is, I will happily amend this post).

However, if this is, instead, an effort to crush his line-in-the-sand stand for a public option, it resurrects a question I alluded to after the president's health care speech to Congress: Why is a Democratic president who once bragged about supporting single-payer health care and who has 60 Senate Democratic votes and a Democratic House now using his power to crush Democratic support for even a public option (ie. something that is way less transformative than single payer)? That is, why is a Democratic president with such Democratic leverage using his power to crush a Democratic priority that Democratic candidates explicitly campaigned on and that is a mere ghost of the stronger policy he once said he strongly supported?

I mean, are Obama and his money-greased aides so absolutely owned by insurance and pharmaceutical companies that they are willing to throw a central Democratic promise under the bus? Is that really what we're dealing with here - just a Democratic version of the old hostile takeover? Or is it something else - maybe 17-dimensional chess, or a Secret Pony Plan?

I ask not because I'm naive, but because the old arguments about "pragmatism" and legislative math don't make sense anymore. As Chris shows, there's as good a chance - if not better - that a public option health-care plan can pass the Congress as a health care plan without the public option. Add to this the fact that a public option is, again, a core Democratic Party promise, and the abandonment of it by a Democratic president could no longer honestly be portrayed as necessary "pragmatism" - it would have to be explained by something much different.

So what is it?

UPDATE: Just a brief note to a few commenters - One of the ugliest traits a human being can display is willful ignorance. Feel free to display it if you want, of course. But just know - it's damn ugly, even if it is kinda hilarious.

David Sirota was the top spokesman for Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee. He is currently writing a book on the middle class economic squeeze for Crown Publishers. You can contact him at Davidsirota.com.

© 2009 Open Left All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/http://www.openleft.com/142696/