... its supported by both Democrats and Independents. In a day and age that the Republicans are digging themselves into a political hole of a rump of a regional party, anyone hoping for a tripartisan bill on this is living in a fantasy land.

Not a big one on reading the essay you are responding to, are you?

This diary is about MAKING that happen, not about useless speculation on the sideline about whether or not it will happen.

Boxer, Sanders, Brown, Gilibrand, Schumer, Levin, Wyden, Franken ... some of those names I'm more confident of than others, but there's a start.

... voting for a corporate insurance mandate without a public option is throwing themselves wide open for a reactionary populist backlash, so for some of them, the end result is not only almost only Democrats voting for a Republican style health care reform, but also almost only Democrats getting heat for it, and some Republicans elected after getting the health care reform flipped into a Republican version of the bill.

Taking the stand now gives them a "principled" stand with the base to vote against a bill without a public option and voting against the bill gives them cover from the right as well.

OTOH, if they take the stand and it forces the White House to go all in and the result is a 50+Biden win, with the public option in place it will be a popular bill in the medium term, and they win for helping bringing it about.

Where's the political downside?

But if abandoning the public option means losing in both houses, that kind of takes that off the table even for "win at any cost".

... real trigger is on the table - a real trigger would delay but not prevent the public option.

Therefore, those calling for a trigger want a phony trigger, welded in place, with a dummy round in the cylinder.

The thing is, Rahm can do all the screaming and yelling he wants, but if 10 Progressive Senators say not substantial public option, no mandate ... he has no choice. They can even vote for cloture, as it'll not get 50 to pass on the floor.

Indeed, if 10 Progressive Senators voted no, it would not even be close ... something that fails to pass, its safer for a number of those facing election this year to side with the Progressives who took a "principled" stand to get cover with the base, and at the same time avoid the ire of the insurance companies.

... how important would ten Progressive Senators be? After all, subtract their votes, and its no passage, not even under reconciliation.

BTW, anyone with a dKos account can login to Congress Matters and add a comment there ... its a site some staffers are reputed to read.

.. from heat he is getting for being a decades long hired gun by the big banks.

... in May of 1980.

2008 is going to be another of those 1976 contests.  Obama is going to lose, and he's pissed me off big-time, so I'll be either leaving that slot empty or doing a write-in.

McCain is no Ford. Not voting against McCain, irrespective of whether the Democratic nominee is Senator Change or Senator Experience, is aiding and abetting the Republican war on voting and the principle of Constitutional Government under the rule of law.

So boo, hoo, hoo, your candidate didn't win the nomination. My candidate didn't win the nomination. Lots of people's candidates didn't win the nomination.

Big fat hairy deal. Perhaps it because of the online echo chamber effect, where every little sliver of difference is exaggerated into some monumental towering conflict ... but the reality is that if somebody supports Senator Clinton for the stands she takes, they 90% support Senator Obama, and visa versa. And if someone supports Senator Clinton for the stands she takes, they can support no more than 20% of what McCain stands for.

And if there are enough supposedly Democratic voters who are willing to allow grossly inflated, and in some cases entirely imaginary, slights and differences distract them from the fact that the political faction currently dominating the Republican party has been pursuing an extra-Constitutional fascistic system of government ... well then, in that case I guess that the US populace no longer gets to enjoy the benefits of Constitutional Government under the rule of law.

And, indeed, Obama at the tail end of a long, bruising nomination struggle is better positioned right now to win the White House than either Gore or Kerry were at May of 2000 or 2004 ... and even though we lost both vote counts, in terms of the election itself we won at least one of those two elections. So someone saying, "Obama is going to lose anyway" is just rationalizing away their complicity with the Republican war on voting and constitutional government under the rule of law.

... something based on the title. Are you perhaps claiming that the diarist is insinuating something with the title?

The compliant mess media repeats radical reactionary talking points, and then those online commentators who drink the mess media cool aid rather than analyzing it and picking it apart repeat the radical reactionary talking points online.

We did a better job of coping with the late 70's oil price shocks than we are going to do coping with the oil price shocks that have just started to hit ...

... but in the 70's, it was Carter's "fault" that an oil price shock generates cost push inflation and that the Federal Reserve is able to drag the economy into a recession one handed ... and the fact that the economy performed better at job creation under Carter than under Bush just doesn't matter because the talking heads of the corporate oligopress are not worried about losing their jobs. They are far more worried about the value of their portfolios.