So, the Senate wants what the lobbyists tell them to want, and all the rest is kabuki. One more time, here is the list of 51 Senators who say they want a public option. Biden would make 52. What’s stopping them now?

Here is a list of the 51 Democrats who said they support a public option:

The New York Times is reporting that Democrats plan to take up several other legislative priorities and then return to health care reform at some later date. With Mr. Obama’s health care overhaul stalled on Capitol Hill, Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, said in an interview that Democrats would try to act [...]

The White House is signalling that they plan to run against Republican obstructionism. If they make this a big issue, it will be a death sentence in the midterm. This dumb strategy should be shut down before it brings down the party. Only 26% of Americans even know the filibuster takes 60 votes to overcome. [...]

Should we conclude that the 51 Democrats in the Senate who said they support a public option when 60 votes were needed were all full of shit, now that the bar is down to 50 and they’re still not moving?

Here is a list of the 51 Democrats who said they support a public option:

A new Pew survey should throw cold water on the logic behind the Democrats’ desire to to get bipartisan support for anything. The survey finds that only a thirf of Americans (32%) were actually aware that no Republican senators voted for health care reform (29% thought Republicans in the Senate had voted for the bill, [...]

Per the Hill, the White House is asking for tougher restrictions on lobbyists just as the President said in the State of the Union speech the other night. Which is a very good thing.

In his State of the Union address, President Obama clearly laid out the logical reason why his push for bipartisanship is inherently doomed. [I]f the Republican leadership is going to insist that sixty votes in the Senate are required to do any business at all in this town, then the responsibility to govern is now [...]

Sen. Tom Harkin is pushing the reconciliation sidecar strategy to pass health care reform. From Omaha World-Herald: Harkin said he has been advocating in recent days for the House to pass the Senate version of the health care bill along with a package of revisions that would be passed through the reconciliation process, which would [...]

Apparently everyone in the White House learned the wrong lesson from the Massachusetts election. It’s not that the country loves Republicans, it’s that they hate DC insider deal making. You can’t claim that you’ll “end the outsized influence of lobbyists” one night and then give them exclusive access you consciously try to hide from the press the next day, and expect that people will find it credible.

The Obama White House has certainly been better about transparency than George Bush’s, but their commitment seems to be to the idea rather than the spirit of transparency. The selective release of visitor logs only goes so far; they’re incomplete at best. The whole point of requests for release of the logs was to shine light on deals that had been cut, and yet the White House has adamantly refused to provide any information on them.

Lack of transparency with regard to deals cut in secret is one of the factors that has made the public mistrust the administration’s health care bill. Release of those records could do much to allay many fears.