Tuesday was "trigger" day. Progressive members of Congress who promised to hold the line on a public option were suddenly floating "trigger" trial balloons this morning, paving the way for Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to revisit them in the afternoon.

Rahm Emanuel’s dream all along was to neuter a public option with "triggers." You know, like the amazing Medicare Part D triggers that passed in 2003 and just never happened to kick in. You remember Medicare Part D? The bad deal that Barack Obama wanted to reform on the campaign trail, the reform that could lead to $30 billion in savings each year, which could’ve paid for a huge chunk of the health care bill. . . well, at least before Rahm dealt it away to PhRMA for chump change.

Rahm revisited triggers in July, and the furor was such that Obama himself had to walk it back. But a boy never gives up on a dream — particularly an arrogant, neoliberal one like Rahm who is just itching to pass out trillions in taxpayer dollars. So, like a zombie that just won’t die, triggers arose from the dead in Rahm’s attempt to get Olympia Snowe on board a Senate deal.

You’ll pardon me if I have a hard time swallowing the notion that everyone is suddenly spontaneously talking "triggers" on the same day that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid emerge from a meeting at the White House. Whereupon we learn that triggers are not always bad, they can be good! They can be used to punish the insurance industry, and not simply to delay a public option until hell freezes over.

Do I look like Charlie Brown here? How is it that the thing they now want to use to punish the insurance industry is the very same mechanism Rahm wants to use to dismantle a public option? It’s "trigger light."

Sorry — if you want to punish the insurance industry, there are plenty of ways to do it without participating in the rehab of the word "triggers." Because the next thing you know, you’ll be "negotiating" to give Rahm everything he wants.

I’m happy that Raul Grijalva is cracking the whip on the 60 members who signed the letter saying they would vote against any bill that does not have a public plan. I think it’s great that he says that "triggers" mean "surrender." But we need to hear that from everyone else who signed the letter.

Saying nothing is not fair. The people whose lives are deeply affected by what happens here, their constituents and their supporters, deserve better than these half-assed trial balloons and ambiguous statements. They need to state once and for all, every one of them, that they understand "triggers" are a sell-out. Anything short of that is unacceptable.