Legal Commentary

Pressure: The Senators Who Killed Health Care? Or the President?

By Big Tent Democrat

Paul Krugman writes:

[N]obody can now say with a straight face that the U.S. health care system is O.K. And if surveys like the New York Times/CBS News poll released last weekend are any indication, voters are ready for major change. The question now is whether we will nonetheless fail to get that change, because a handful of Democratic senators are still determined to party like it’s 1993.

. . . Yet it remains all too possible that health care reform will fail, as it has so many times before. . . . The real risk is that health care reform will be undermined by “centrist” Democratic senators . . . Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska initially declared that the public option — which, remember, has overwhelming popular support — was a “deal-breaker.” . . . Mr. Nelson softened his stand after reform advocates began a public campaign targeting him for his position on the public option.

(Emphasis supplied.) It's great that Ben Nelson "softened." But there is only one way for the public option to survive -- reform groups need to tell the President that he will be remembered as the guy who killed health care - not Ben Nelson or Kent Conrad. He needs to call them out when the time comes. Believe me, nobody remembers that Moynihan killed health care reform in 1994. Hell, Hillary announced her first Senate campaign at his farm in New York.

Speaking for me only

Full post as published by TalkLeft on June 22, 2009 (boomark / email).