Republicans abolish Don't ask, don't tell.

[claymisher]

Originally Posted by Wonderment

Well, it's easy of course to Monday morning quarterback it, but I think we should have got Barack firmly committed to public option as a candidate (Edwards and Kucinich were out in front of him on PO). Obama's approach was always to cover more people (the "near-poor") rather than provide universal coverage. He also jumped right into bed up front with the AMA, big Pharma, big Hospital and the insurers (later vilified), but that's a separate story.

Wonderment, you're just making shit up here. You've got your poor disappointed liberal narrative and you're inventing facts to fit into it. Jacob Hacker came up with the overall health care design, and Roger Hickey came up with the public option. Edwards got behind it first (for 2008, not 2004), then Obama, then Clinton, all in summer 2007. Kucinich was the only candidate in 2008 who didn't support the public option, being for single-payer only.

Obama was completely committed to the public option, talked about it in his campaign, all through 2009 in town halls and in his address to Congress, and even organized campaigns to pressure Congress to include. I printed out pro-public option PDFs from barackobama.com and took them down to the offices of each of my Senators in the summer last year. They got pretty close but came up short. Obama may be blowing it on the economy and DADT but he definitely gets an A on health care.