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I am not so generous with Obama. There are all these deals behind the scenes going on, especially between Pelosi and Reid. Pelosi has said with no public option, there will be not enough votes from the House. If the progressive caucus (CPC) sticks to their guns, there will be not enough votes.
I think what's going on is a big time insider power game on how to stage an endgame, so that the blame goes to either the progressive caucus or the blue dogs and they join the repugnant loonies.
That was the whole reason I spent some time thinking about who is in the CPC, where their districts are and whether they are vulnerable or not. It looks like they are not vulernable by voting NAY on ass-wipe insurance bailouts.
On the other hand there are more blue-dogs in the Senate and they do look vulnerable. Baucus is from Montana. It's a great illustration in the asysmetry of power between the House and Senate.
I think there are strange manipulations of Senate rules between the Baucus committee and the Dodd committee that Reid is playing games with that favor Baucaus with more power than he should have. Reid and Baucaus are vulnerable. I am not sure about Dodd. Some triangulation is going there, but I don't know what. If Reid plays up Dodd and Sanders, then it makes the Senate (and therefore Reid) look more liberal. I think Reid is helping to keep Baucaus in the news with Dodd, Sanders, et al in the background. The Reid and Pelosi and pretend to be the moderate voice.
So here's what I hope plays out. The Senate passes a bill with no `public option', or a complete farce option, and delivers it to Pelosi. She hands it off to the floor and sticks the hot rod up the CPC ass. They get pissed off, join the repugnants and defeat the bill.
Congress gets the blame. Reid and Pelosi can agree they tried their best. Obama can merrily say We Reasonable Pople Tried, but right and left partisanship was too great. Let's move on.
I think is it a serious mistake to trust Obama for a veto.
I think his speech said, I'll sign anything. In fact, I am beginning to think that his whole political strategy of handing open guidelines to Congress, was essentially a plan to sign anything that could get passed. That makes a certain slime sense. Obama gets to keep above the battle while little or nothing changes.
A couple of weeks ago, Doug's guest Bruce Dixon, who pondered the latter possibility toward the end of the interview. This is what got me started to thinking about what was going on in both the CBC and CPC.
CG