"Did you hear that, Dennis?" should have been "Did you hear that, Joe?"

[t0dd]

President Obama can call out a stalwart progressive like Congressman Kucinich during a rally near his district, but when it came to the biggest champion of the health insurance industry in the Senate, Joe Lieberman, he was absolutely silent.

He never once pressured a single conservative Democrat to support a bill that would have actually benefited ordinary people more than the insurance industry. He never once intervened in Joe Lieberman's quest to kill every iteration of the public option. Even when there were 59 votes for a small Medicare buy-in, the White House told Harry Reid to give Joe what he wants and ordered it be scrapped from the final bill.

Obama never wanted a public option. That's why he traded it away last summer. The only thing he fought for was to uphold his deals with the for-profit hospital lobby and pharmaceutical industry by remaining numb to those elements of reform that would have directly impacted those deals. Then he makes the bold claim that he never campaigned on a public option, hoping no one will notice his deceit. Why are we so quick to forget that?

The public option would have been far more than a "sliver" of reform, but I guess since we are so close to "victory", we can shrug off its exclusion. But you just remember what really killed it. Just like direct Medicare drug price negotiation and drug re-importation.

But I guess this is the part where we pretend none of this happened. This is the part where us holdouts fall in line, to dawn our sheep clothing and join the rest of the flock.