Given that it seems Obama’s folks are backing off the public option, and given that Howard Dean says that anyone who doesn’t vote for that needs to be primaried from the left (pardon me for verbing a noun), then doesn’t it follow that we have a recent Chairman of the DNC saying that the Democratic President deserves to be tossed out down the road? Sure you can spin it as saying Obama doesn’t actually vote per se, but c’mon - he is the LEADER of the party right? He can say he will veto any bill that doesn’t include a public option (not that we can expect him to keep any promise, but still…).
Former Democratic National Committee chair Howard Dean fired one of the clearest warning shots at hesitant Democratic lawmakers on Thursday, insisting that if the party was unable to produce a health care bill with a public plan, there would be electoral consequences.
“I do think there will be primaries as the result of all this, if the bill doesn’t pass with a public option,” Dean said, in a phone interview with the Huffington Post.
Good catch; I'd've promoted this if you had more...
Jeff Emanuel Monday, August 17th at 1:13PM EDT (link)…commentary
JE
Not sure what else I could add other than being more verbose
bk Monday, August 17th at 1:37PM EDT (link)Dean says the left needs to go after any Democrats who let the public option fall through the cracks.
Sebelius says (though now the WH seems to be trying to uh “recalibrate” it) that Obama is willing to let the public option be dropped if it means passing something that can be called Health Care Reform or Health Insurance Reform or whatever this week’s title is.
Ergo it seems fair to conclude that - if Sebelius was correct - Obama deserves to get an even-more leftwing Democratic primary opponent in 2012 instead of having a united party working to get him reelected.
Sure - it’s a bit of hyperbole to link all this together, but it seems fair game if we are to take Democrat leaders at their word.