President Obama: "This is the public option debate all over"

In his pathetic defense of caving in on the tax cuts issue President Obama brought up the criticism he faced from the left over his abandonment of the public option.  He was fielding a question about compromising too much and his defense was that while the health care bill did not include the public option it had so many other things that Democrats had been fighting for.  The problem with his memory or interpretation of those events is that the public option was not a holy grail for Democrats.  It was a watered down substitute for what we really wanted and that was a Single Payer Option.  But since the President and the Democrat super-majority Congress was too weak willed to push for that plan, the result was compromising on the compromise.

Now that the tax cut deal has been back-roomed to placate the GOP and their ultra-rich benefactors, similar criticisms are coming out that he did not negotiate tough enough and did not stick to his principles or his campaign promises.  The Republicans, meanwhile, get to hold up their banner of stubborn obstructionism and celebrate yet another capitulation by the spineless Democrats.

Again the fault for this travesty lies with the Blue Dogs in Congress who had threatened to vote against a tax cut for the middle class bill in the lead up to the elections, and to the Obama White House that did not push Congress to act before the midterms, and to the fickle electorate that somehow thought that putting people in Congress who care only for the rich would somehow help the country.

The next time you hear a Republican complain about losing their unemployment benefits, or about increasing deficits, remind them that 700-900 billion more dollars were just added to the deficit so that Sean Penn, Susan Sarandon, Michael Moore, and Keith Olbermann can save some money.