Barack Obama was the most promising Democratic Party candidate to come along in the new century with overwhelming support from young voters, minorities, Independents and other disadvantaged people in America.

Yet, in spite of the “audacity of hope” I have this nagging feeling that Republicans are winning the war of words and their anti-Obama propaganda is being regurgitated on the evening news to a nauseous extent. I keep asking myself, “Haven’t the mainstream media learned squat since the horrific W.M.D. lies that led up to the catastrophe in Iraq?” Then, they were all tripping over themselves to show how patriotic they were while simultaneously pillorying those who criticized the Bush “just and noble” war.

Now, all the media cameras are focused on the violence-prone NRA types who are circling town hall venues with assault weapons, allowing the grandstanding that Fox News are exploiting to the hilt. After all, more Southern whites, according to a statistic just released, watch Fox News more than any other TV network.

Howard Dean appeared on Keith Olbermann’s Countdown tonight and said a few things that were reassuring though. He believes a good bill, mainly one that includes the public option, will be passed and Obama will sign it by December. I hope he’s right. The rest of the gnashing of teeth and hand wringing by Democrats predicting chaos, he says, is typical angst and they’ll eventually get over it and sign on. The way I see it, there’s no half-good bill. It either must give all Americans accessibility or the Democrats might as well say good-bye to their majority status.

But several weeks ago I called Cohen’s office and I was told he had not made a commitment yet.

It looks like he is squarely in our camp now and probably needs to take the Firedoglake pledge.

Perceiving that Obama is caving in faster than they anticipated they are making sounds like, “Oh, private non-profit cooperatives? Hmm, we’ll have to think about that and then get back to you.” Like they care.

Of course, it would make no difference at all what plan Obama has in the works, especially one that helps tens of millions of Americans who desperately need immediate help. Republicans will oppose anything and everything that is connected to Barack Obama because to them, this is déjà vu 1994. That’s when Republicans defeated Bill Clinton’s health care and then took over both houses of congress, control which they held for 12 tortuous years.

Democrat,”yellow dog” Kent Conrad says we can’t chase the government option rabbit and it won’t work. Well, who is he to say when he comes from a state that has fewer citizens in the entire state than we do in the city of Austin, Texas?

Not only that, but North Dakota lost population, decreasing from 642,200 in 2000 to 639,715 in 2007. What happened to those other 2,500 people? Did the 2003 end of life doctor-patient consultation provision that the Republicans included in the Medicare Part D kill grandma?

No public option, no health care reform — period. Unless something changes drastically between now and 2012 I can’t think of many things Barack Obama could do to make me want to vote him back in again. The way he caved in to the gun lobby it won’t be long before he capitulates to the Religious Right and supports overturning Roe v. Wade and the teaching of Creation Science in public school science classrooms.

If the liberals in the House hold firm would they have to insist the Senate pass their bill first, or would it matter?

I’m a little late, ES, but I’ll take a stab at answering this, or at least maybe help you to refine your question.

I think any answer to your question has to involve the ominous and inscrutable secret proceedings of the free-for-all conferencing process (to which only the most powerful Party bosses will be invited, absent a rebellion in the rank-and-file ranks) – which will take place after the House and Senate have finished their public work on medical insurance reform. A secret conference in which, if past is prologue, Rahm Emanuel and his colleagues in the White House will effectively be in charge, on behalf of Obama. With Reid and Pelosi (unless she decides to stand her democratic, independent-legislature ground for a change, even if against her will because of a firm stand by House progressives) obediently manufacturing political cover for their members in exchange for votes on what the president wants from a conferenced bill.

Most of what’s going on right now behind closed doors (largely by way of the private Baucus machinations) is a bastardized process of selecting a legislative outcome before debate and amendment and voting takes place in public. It’s an effort to prevent pressure-packed votes for incumbents on measures Congress and the president know full-well the public wants, but that they know their campaign funders do not want. So they are in the process of trying to find an end product that meets with the approval of their funders but that can also somehow be plausibly sold to the American people, without mobs descending on Congress when we see them selling us out.

The Party is in charge, in short, and the wimps in Congress want that Party to protect them from us, however it can best be done. And that means a relative handful of people at the top, including Baucus, are in charge, if the rest of the Congress, and the rest of the Finance Committee, won’t buck him or them, and demand genuine committee and floor debate and consideration, let the political-heat chips fall where they may.

The House progressive caucus does have the numbers to make a difference here – but almost certainly only by openly bucking their Party, and so far, Party (and its first African-American president) has trumped nation and the public interest for a large percentage of that fair-weather-friend, progressive-in-name-only caucus.

If House progressives (and/or others) do take a genuine stand to protect a meaningful public option, and stick to it – and assuming Republicans don’t cross over – the choice will become stark for the White House and the Senate: compromise with Pelosi and the House, or get no medical insurance reform this year. Such a stand would at least bring the issue and the different sides very clearly into public view (a big plus for the will of the public) – and that’s when the serious negotiating would really begin…