There is a positive way to look at this. People always want Democrats to show spine.

If courts felt free to “second-guess the judgments of correction officials,” what kind of justice system would we have?

Anyway, the ruling isn’t so bad, after all.

Like with gay rights, Obama’s position is “evolving.” Just not in a good direction.

Ironic that the Supreme Court wouldn’t strike down single payer, but the big blogs and activist groups did, calling single-payer advocacy “kabuki,” “not serious” and the like.

The wafty “public option” was sold to Professional Left insiders through a process devoid of transparency, and they glibly (and sometimes profitably) sold that hokum to unsuspecting progressives.

Advocates of real reform were routinely met with sharp elbows, stories of amazing Medicare for All activism were met with deaf ears.

This is a fantasy:

The government health plan would compete with the private insurers, beat those insurers on price and expand until national health care became inevitable.

Those who took proven solutions off the table and called for the arrest of people (see here and here for examples) who tried to raise them in public forums wouldn’t dare create a “public option” whatzit that would challenge health profiteers. Profit is removed from the equation, or it isn’t. “Public option” mania just provided a shiny object to distract the left from demanding real reform.

Just so sad to see the “public option” placebo still being mourned. Never had a fixed definition, breadth of availability, or possible means of meaningfully competing in a crooked system run by moneyed interests.

Profit needs to be removed from healthcare access. Period. Medicare for All or nationalized medicine. Everything else is just wanking.

Fortunately, the left blogosphere prides itself in transparency and accountability and will do a robust inquiry into how such a well-financed cipher of a “plan” as “public option” suddenly and completely galvanized the top sites, leading to often sharp-elbowed exclusion of single-payer advocacy during the year-long HCR discussion.

Good thing the big blogs and activist groups advocated for single-payer instead of the vaporous “public option”! Oh, wait….

That is the question Republican voters must face.

Remember, remember the 5th of February:

http://dayofshame.blogspot.com/

http://vastleft.blogspot.com/2012/02/american-extremists-day-of-shame-2012.html

But, but… http://americanextremists.thecomicseries.com/comics/191/

Re: SOTU — the president seemed to say that attacking Iran is our default course.

And what should have been a learning experience hasn’t been.

Yes, indeed.

“It was decided” is the rub. Where was it decided and how?

How is it that the top tier prog bloggers and activist groups rallied around the wafty “public option” agenda?

What was the process? Was anyone bankrolling incentives?

And why will practically no one, even at this late date, admit what an undefined nothingburger “public option” was and remains?

It’s just kind of weird that at this late date, virtually no one will admit that “public option” meant no fixed thing. No set concept of how many people it would cover (Obama indicated under 5%, possibly much lower), and how in such a corrupted environment it would be allowed to be meaningfully competitive with for-profit insurance. The details didn’t matter, because a bunch of professional lefties went all in for something, anything, that could be called “public option,” regardless of any benefits for average Americans and regardless of how aggressively they marginalized single-payer advocates.

Dayen and company see betrayal in what the Democrats did (and I won’t argue with that). But what about what the big bloggers and advocacy organizations who suddenly and imperiously decided this wafty “plan” was the only game in town, rather than pushing for something, y’know, that would actually solve the problems if enacted?

It’s truly amazing how everyone just whistles past the meaninglessness of “public option” and the mysterious way it became the coin of the realm in prog-land.

“Public Option… doesn’t mean anything. The vagueness allowed anyone to fill in the blanks….” — William Greider

“…the public option was not a cure-all. In fact, the Democrats had in reality already managed to kill the public option by watering it down to the point of near-meaninglessness.” — Matt Taibbi

“I get down on my knees every day and thank God that the PO was stripped out of the Senate bill. The only role the PO has played since June has been to give well-meaning progressives all over America the cover they needed to support legislation that throws hundreds of billions of dollars per decade at the insurance industry, the nation’s most powerful opponent of single-payer.” — Kip Sullivan

“Public Option… doesn’t mean anything. The vagueness allowed anyone to fill in the blanks….” — William Greider

“…the public option was not a cure-all. In fact, the Democrats had in reality already managed to kill the public option by watering it down to the point of near-meaninglessness.” — Matt Taibbi

While learning lessons from the “public option” campaign, perhaps one should consider the problem that “public option” meant no fixed thing — no definition of who would be covered under what terms… let alone the problem that, if the politics were so corrupted that proven solutions like single-payer and nationalized healthcare were taboo even to discuss*, “public option” would be allowed to be meaningfully competitive against for-profit insurance.

There’s yet to be any accounting for how the vaporous “public option” (rather than Medicare for All) became the sine qua non for progressive advocacy, even though it was a complete cipher. “We” fought for a nothingburger and lost.
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* A situation which barely anyone on the big blogs fought back against, as “public option” mania ruled the day.