Is it possible for you to become more demoralized than you've been over the last 9 months?

Handover them sixguns, Upstate Kent.  There's a new sheriff in town.

Aren't you a bit old to be engaging in this nonsense?  What motivates you to waste everyone's time with such trite, juvenile (and most offensively utterly lacking in wit) comments?  I, for one, find this kind of thing tedious and unnecessary.  Would you either add to the discussion or simply refrain, please.

She won't vote for cloture with an opt-out--only for a trigger.

I disagree that you have to make the 60th most liberal senator "happy." You only have to make them afraid of what they will lose if they vote against cloture on the president's top legislative priority.

But for that to work, the White House has to stop sending signals that a bill with a triggered public option would be okey-dokey.

If it were the final bill your point would hold a lot more weight. But right now the primary goal is to get to the bill into conference and then to see where we stand.

One thing I do not understand is why everyone is pretending that whatever bill passes now is going to be the high water mark for how progressive the bill will be. The House wants a strong P.O. and the progressive caucus can sink anything they want.

Actually, an unmitigated disaster is an absolute disaster, so it appears you agree.

All of this assumes as well that the president was fighting for it all along, but then there is this out of the HIll today as reported at Americablog:

"I've not been very happy with the White House's lukewarm support of the public option," he said, articulating a gripe liberals have been making for months.

"I would hope the president would speak out more forcefully in favor of the public option," Brown said, adding "I expect he will."

http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/64581 -liberals-confident-that-public-healthca re-option-will-come-through

The image being presented is that the president was backed into a corner after having fault for it. But from Harkin's statement it is clear the president has never fought for  the inclusion of the PO.

The consensus is that we indeed are on such a cusp. How wonderful is it that we are now at the point where we are arguing about the relative magnitude of just how 'big' that 'something' will be? It's the nature of political victory that it invariably falls short of perfection. It will be a shame if we don't recognize and celebrate this victory (when it comes) because it won't, and won't ever, be perfect.

I look at politics sensibly. Who has what to gain? What are their interests? How will they gain it? Why was this move made? When you look at the players on the board, it is clear who has the most to lose with a shift of political power in DC at this point: Conservative Democrats and Blue Dogs.

Their bread and butter since the early 90s has been through controlling the Democratic Party by holding the veto power in the party. If you wanted a bill passed, you had to have their approval or else they would say "see we may be elected out of office, and then the GOP will take over."

The times are changing. The GOP is irrelevant. Even if the GOP picks up seats next year, I do not think that over the next decade and a half it will matter because the GOP will almost certainly have to shift left to remain relevant. Like the New Deal Democrats, the centrists will increasingly become irrelevant as they have played the game - namely to move right. I expect the new centrism to be to move left- as per Reid on the opt out. He's up for election. He may still fail on this, but I am assuming electoral politics is making it clear to  him which way the winds are blowing and are louder than the White House to him.

So, that leaves the Conservative Democrats losing power to progressive Democrats as progressive views become the center. It is one of the reasons one should not trust Rahm. He has the most to lose in a shifting paradigm away from Blue Dogs to progressives. Conservative Democrats are his base of influence in Congress. His interests are not necessarily those of President Obama's interests.