Speech night

The President's big health care speech is tonight and everyone is ready to erroneously label the reform effort dead or vibrant based on the quality of the oratory. But, as we know, it'll have little to do with whether health care gets passed. Bill Clinton gave some great health care speeches. I forget, was his health care victory complete and total or just merely overwhelming? Hell everyone who has wanted to pass health care reform has given some good speeches, but reform rarely ever happens. Why? Because of the people the President is going to give the speech to: Congress.

But what the speech will do is signal, finally, what the President actually wants in a bill, what actual policies he wants to enact, actual ideas he wants implemented, instead of a bunch of vague statements about cost curve bending and platitudes about better health care. And what will our son of Kenya fight for this evening? According to media wags, he will fight for the thing his administration has spent the last few months talking down and sandbagging: the public option.

President Barack Obama, in a high-stakes speech Wednesday to Congress and the nation, will press for a government-run insurance option in a proposed overhaul of the U.S. health-care system that has divided lawmakers and voters for months.

White House officials say the president will detail what he wants in the health-care overhaul, as well as say he is open to better ideas on a government plan if lawmakers have them.
...
The president is likely to say that a government-run insurance plan, known as the "public option," will not provide a level of subsidies that give it an unfair advantage over private insurers, according to aides familiar with the speech preparations.

About....fucking...time? Better late than never, I guess. This comes after Max Baucus unveiled his plan, to special interests before policy makers, which not only didn't include a public option, but damn near exhausted Baucus' repertoire of folksy bullshit. This with perennial P.O.S. Joe Lieberman going around telling everyone that 70+% public support for a public option means that it is unpopular.

But hey, pushing for a public option. Good, Mr. President. Better late than never, I guess. This would have been better months ago when you seemingly decided to hand off total control of health care legislation to the world's dumbest legislative body. So in the end I hope your speechy thingy goes well, but really, I hope you've learned that putting all your eggs in the "surely this legislative body will respond to logic and the whims of the American people" basket is a fool's errand. You need to put your eggs in the "I have pictures of you diddling young boys, vote for what's right before I use them to hound you to a suicide" arm twisting basket. Kill one senator as an example to the others, that's the only way.