Your morning cryptic quote about health care

After a late afternoon flurry of quotes and stories about how things might be looking up for the public option in the Senate bill, and that Harry Reid had made a decision to include it in the bill, someone from Reid's office stepped forward to offer an update on the status of his mind.

ABC reported today that they have the goods, citing Democratic sources and claiming Reid “has concluded he can pass a bill with a public option.” ABC said Reid is now convinced that even if some moderates are still holding out against it, they will ultimately vote for it on the procedural vote to get it past a filibuster.

Not so much, the senior Senate aide claims. “He has not concluded anything yet,” the aide said of Reid. “But he is more optimistic.”

It's not quite a full "we're leaning towards talking about a public option" on the Reid Zen-meter, but yet another time in which we're supposed to gauge the esoteric status updates of the Majority Leader's mind to decide whether or not we we should be jumping off of bridges over the public option. But such are the arcane measures of the Senate, where Olympia Snowe talks about using a public option 'trigger' as a means of securing her vote and then tells everyone that she won't vote for a bill with any public option when it looks like at the very least a 'trigger' will be in.

But there we are. Daily updates from Reid about the possibilities of maybes, extensive discussions on talking about talking, how you 'like-like' a public option but don't 'like-like' it, and various and sundry texts about conclusions and your state of mind, are considered positive signals to everyone about your leadership and stewardship of the Senate negotiations, such as it is. This just in: Reid is looking into the option of considering calling a quorum to gauge support for whether he has enough votes for the discussion on the question of declaring Opposite Day before any final health care vote. Maybe. I hope all this bullshit leads somewhere productive and nottowards the most obvious conclusion: "Ohhh we tried, for serious, but we'll just have to accept the milquetoast reform you all knew we were going to pass months ago. Honest, we made an attempt. Didn't you see all those quotes about 'maybes' and 'conclusions' and discussing discussions? Too bad, no public option."