Ben Smith writes that if the health care bill passes with “unified, if grumbly, support on the left, it would seem to vindicate the White House’s fundamental approach, which was to take the left for granted as much as possible and focus on courting marginal members of the Senate.”

He’s absolutely right. As I told Jonathan Weisman of the Wall Street Journal the other day (which he didn’t print), “f#%king r$%ards” worked.

Today, Dennis Kucinich appeared at a rally with President Obama in Cleveland, despite the fact that the White House sent MoveOn to picket and threaten him if he honors his pledge and votes against the health care bill with no public option. But that’s more than you can say for freshman Congressman John Boccieri, a [...]

I still don’t know if they can pass this monstrosity of a bill. But if progressives stand down and do nothing while corporate America runs roughshod our institutions and our representatives, no member of Congress will ever have the political courage to stand up against corporate power again.

HOLLYWOOD: Knows the difference between a hero and a villain. Not surprised when a movie fails because the audience finds it emotionally unsatisfying.

DC: Populated by political stenographers who can’t seem to tell the difference between a hero and a villain. Stunned when the general public can.

The President’s new health care bill does not include a public option, but it does increase the maximum penalty for failure to comply with the mandate to buy health insurance, which rises from 2% to 2.5% of annual income (PDF). But for months now, polling has shown that a mandate with no public option is [...]

The “60 vote” bar on the public option was always a sham. But now that it’s gone, nobody wants to be Joe Lieberman and play the role of spoiler so PhRMA can have their deal. Ezra Klein reports: I’ve spoken to a lot of offices about this now, and all of them are ambivalent privately, [...]

One sure sign that the Senate health care bill is dead as a doornail is the inevitable appearance of the anonymously-sourced finger-pointing articles. And in a novel twist, we have one blaming Rahm for the failure to pass health care reform that appear to be written by Rahm:

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:

Back in November, Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, ripped the US Chamber of Commerce for shopping around for an economist critical of health care reform. The Chamber was offering $50,000 for the services of a “respected economist.” “Now I know the price for a tenured economist,” Rahm Emanuel chuckled. “I’ve come to the conclusion [...]

For more background, see Jon Walker’s “Best Way To “Fix It Later” Is With No Individual Mandate Now.” If they want to punt on the public option, they should punt on the mandate too.