All you have to do is imagine what Bush and the Republicans would be doing if this bill were theirs!

If Obama acted like a Republican:

1. He would go on TV back in March and announce his demands: preferably single payer, at minimum a robust public option that would reduce health care costs by introducing competition, plus outlawing pre-existing conditions.

2. Then he would have DEMANDED an up or down vote in the U.S. Senate on his health care bill. At the same time he would have mobilized his network of election supporters to an intense grass roots lobbying effort in all 50 states -- combined with a fund-raising effort to raise tens of millions of dollars for TV and radio advertising to fight off the inevitable insurance industry attacks.

He would have mobilized his supporters who could have turned out by the millions and crushed the astro-turf tea-baggers by overwhelming numbers.

3. Then Democrats would have gone on the offensive against Republicans every day for "blocking the people's will.""Elections have consequences!" they could say (just as Republicans did in 2001 and 2005). They would accuse conservative obstructionists of "wanting Americans to die!" Grab the initiative and don't let it go!

4. Obama would launch a full court press on conservative Democrats, exactly in the way that he's pressured progressives to fold all year. He would also have tried to mobilize Maine voters to put all out pressure on Olympia Snowe.

He could have made it totally unacceptable for any Democrat to filibuster the bill and had weekly national addresses on TV to shill for what he wanted.

And he could have insisted that the health care bill steer WELL CLEAR of Max Baucus's committee and be voted on by the August recess. He would have threatened to call Congress back into session to pass health care reform as Bush used to do for HIS priorities.

Obama did NONE of this. He stood aside and let Max Baucus waste 5 months pathetically trying to weaken the bill enough to get "bi-partisan support" from Republicans who were OBVIOUSLY going to block it in their own political interests. 80%+ of Republicans were opposed to this legislation. Why would any Republican Senator vote for it? This was clear in June and July! Why wait around for 3 more months while the insurance lobby mobilized against the bill and Conservadems took ever greater efforts to block and weaken it!

Obama's "leadership" on this bill was utterly pathetic and weak. He got exactly what he apparently wanted --- a completely useless bill that the insurance industry could live with when what we need DESPERATELY is a revolutionary overhaul of our health care system that has fundamentally broken.

Whatever you think Obama promised, I assure you that he did mislead people into thinking that he wouldn't intentionally try to water down the bill over and over by twisting progressive arms to hand Nelson and Lieberman whatever they ask for.

whether it is technically braking a promise or not kinda misses the point.

"I still don't see that as a promise."

That's a surprise: Deny. Deny. Deny. We have never seen that ploy before.

If anything is going to get done, we are going to have to  accept that there are people  like you who will distract through denial.

You are right, President Obama never explicitly promised a public option.  He did, however, explicitly promise cost controls, with the public option being one possible element of that.

What the plan delivers, unfortunately, is not cost controls, but rather a bending the curve in cost growth at some future point...

I have sent money and wore out my sneakers trying to get Edwards in as Veep. I have T-Shirts to prove it.

The point I was making, in case it was missed, is that people who never give dollar one are the ones most likely to threaten to withhold contributions unless ' my will be done'. Just threaten to hold your breath until you turn blue.

Accomplishes the same thing.

I'm pretty confident that I would be able to double the combined contributions of all here who have threatened to withhold contributions to fill-in-the-blank quite easily. Probably without spending a cent.

You are asking them to give up their faith. think of it as  like talking to christian and asking them to stop believing in Jesus.

How about figuring out IF we have to work against the President. I am willing to entertain the notion, despite what bruh thinks, but I am not willing to concede the point without seriously thinking about it.

He could have refrained from stealing Texas and Florida, for starters.

it is not about thinking they had more power than they did.

What power they did have was used to pressure progressives to do the bidding of the Insurance Industry. That's what the problem is.

Everybody.

My concern is that in our anger we all are degenerating into teabaggers, arguing on rumors and half truths and spite.

As a follow up, I think it is really important to keep the pros and cons (and there are many of them) in the bill in perspective.

And if the bill should be passed, where do we go from here? What is the most practical path to victory for a public option?

And social security was still weak and watered down when it passed, branding him a "sell-out".