Read this and tell me honestly if it wasn’t something you read here first (emphasis mine).
Despite months of outward ambivalence about creating a government health insurance plan, the Obama White House has launched a behind-the-scenes campaign to get divided Senate Democrats to take up some version of the idea for a final vote in the coming weeks.
President Obama has cited a preference for the so-called public option. But faced with intense criticism over the summer, he strategically expressed openness to health cooperatives and other ways to offer consumers potentially more affordable alternatives to private health plans.
In the last week, however, senior administration officials have been holding private meetings almost daily at the Capitol with senior Democratic staff to discuss ways to include a version of the public plan in the healthcare bill that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) plans to bring to the Senate floor this month, according to senior Democratic congressional aides.
I take criticism from some of my blogging colleagues and readers for being some kind of apologist for the administration. What I am actually attempting to do is tell you the truth. If I thought the administration was caving on health care reform with a public option, I would have told you that. If I though their strategy was boneheaded and wouldn’t work, I would have criticized it. Their actions made perfect sense to me because they followed the only path I could see to success. This is like trying to thread a needle, and the battle isn’t won. But, what I called “creative ambiguity” and the L.A. Times calls “strategically expressed openness,” was the only option they had.
