Who's to bless, who's to blame?

For months, while most progressives united around a public option - the second-best choice to provide the "universal, affordable health care" Barack Obama repeatedly said America needed - the Republicans and their enablers in the Democratic Party, including, of course, Senator Joe Lieberman, attacked the idea. And attacked other elements of the health insurance legislation in the House and Senate.

Real reform - the single-payer choice that actually would have provided affordable, universal health coverage - was off the table from the beginning. That was thanks to an informal agreement among Republicans, most congressional Democrats, the White House, the insurance companies and the drug companies. Even most left-progressives accepted early on that there would be no way this could happen. So they compromised in hopes of an inclusive public option.

Over time the public option was eviscerated by the Party of No-gotiators, Lieberman and the other butchers. From inclusive to robust to weak, the public option was transformed into a shadow of its former self. Nonetheless, disappointed though they were, progressives hung on, supporting the legislation while lamenting every flash of the knife applied to it. [snip]

Candidate Barack Obama repeatedly said that he would listen to all sides and take ideas from all sides. We left-progressives knew from the start that this didn't mean everything we wanted would happen, not even a quarter of it. But being listened to after decades in the wilderness under both Republicans and Democrats sounded like progress.

However, repeatedly, on issue after issue, Barack Obama listens to and talks to the right, the center-right, the center, and the center-left. As he should. On rare occasions, even a right winger has a good idea. The left, on the other hand, can't seem to get his ear. And yet, now that the end game on health coverage reform has arrived and we say, "you know this thing sucks so bad it's probably not worth voting for in its present form," it's not the No-gotiators or Joe Lieberman or Ben Nelson or Blanche Lincoln or the insurance companies that get blamed for standing in the way of reform. You know, the people and corporations who still aren't done gutting this legislation.

Nah. Not them. It's us. It's our fault and Howard Dean's fault and the fault of all the people who swallowed hard and accepted an ever-weaker bill until it became too weak. Our fault.

We get the message.

DW,
A better question might be:
"Which Health Care Company will Obama accept an employment offer from in January, 2013?"

That would be a "NO" in the strongest possible terms.
http://millsriverliberal.blogspot.com/2009/12/national-disgrace.html