[lbo-talk] Glenn Greenwald: "The 'Public Option': Democrats' Scam Becomes More Transparent"

[Joseph Catron]

"A couple of weeks ago, I wrote
about<http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/02/23/democrats/index.html>what
seemed to be a glaring (and quite typical) scam perpetrated
by Congressional Democrats:  all year long, they insisted that the White
House and a majority of Democratic
Senators<http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2010/01/29/list-of-51-senate-democrats-who-support-a-public-option-whats-stopping-them-now/>vigorously
supported a public option, but the only thing oh-so-unfortunately
preventing its enactment was the filibuster:  *sadly, we have 50 but not 60
votes for it*, they insisted.  Democratic pundits used that claim to push
for "filibuster reform," arguing that if only majority rule were required in
the Senate, then the noble Democrats would be able to deliver all sorts of
wonderful progressive reforms that they were truly eager to enact but which
the evil filibuster now prevents.  In response, advocates of the public
option kept arguing<http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2009/12/20/the-insidious-myth-of-the-progressive-%E2%80%9Cbill-killers%E2%80%9D/>that
the public option could be accomplished by reconciliation -- where
only
50 votes, not 60, would be required -- but Obama loyalists scorned that
reconciliation proposal<http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/12/insidious-myth-of-reconciliation.html>,
insisting (at least before the Senate passed a bill with 60 votes) that
using reconciliation was Unserious, naive, procedurally impossible, and
politically disastrous."
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/03/12-5

-- 
"Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre, mod sceal þe mare, þe ure mægen
lytlað."