It really is amazing how the human mind can string together disparate pieces of information to create any number of narratives. Booman does a good job of creating a potentially reasonable explanation of the Democratic leadership's strategy on health reform. Is it true? Who knows? The White House has certainly been doing its part to provide fodder for such speculators to work with. They want this, no, they want that, no, what they really want is this other thing. At this point there's been so many different conflicting hints put out that anyone can put together just about whatever story they want to explain what's happening and there's some unnamed source to provide the words to back it up.
This bit of anonymous sourcery from HuffPo fills in some of the reasoning for the Obama-is-actively-opposing-a-public-option-in-the-Senate story line:
President Barack Obama is actively discouraging Senate Democrats in their effort to include a public insurance option with a state opt-out clause as part of health care reform. In its place, say multiple Democratic sources, Obama has indicated a preference for an alternative policy, favored by the insurance industry, which would see a public plan "triggered" into effect in the future by a failure of the industry to meet certain benchmarks...
"Everybody knows we're close enough that these guys could be rolled. They just don't want to do it because it makes the politics harder," said a senior Democratic source, saying that Obama is worried about the political fate of Blue Dogs and conservative Senate Democrats if the bill isn't seen as bipartisan. "These last couple folks, they could get them if Obama leaned on them."
But with fundamental reform of the health care system in plain sight for the first time in half a century, the president appears to be siding with those who see the Senate and its entrenched culture as too resistant to change. Administration officials say that Obama's preference for the trigger, which is backed by Maine Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe, is founded in a fear that Reid's public option couldn't get the 60 votes needed to overcome a GOP filibuster. More specifically, aides fear that a handful of conservative Democrats will not support a bill unless it has at least one Republican member's support.
Of course the WH has been denying that they're discouraging Reid from pushing for an opt-out public option.
But the push-back, say sources with direct knowledge of deliberations between leadership and the administration, does not square with Obama's private indications to Senate leaders. The sources say that the president has left little doubt about his apprehension with an opt-out approach.
It is not philosophical, one White House aide explained, but is a matter of political practicality. If the votes were there to pass a robust public option through the Senate, the president would be leading the charge, the aide said. But after six months of concern that it would be filibustered, the bet among Obama's aides is that Reid is now simply being too optimistic in his whip count...
"He's been so convinced by his political people from the beginning that we can't get a bill with a public option, he's internalized it. Even though it's now become obvious we can get a bill without selling out the public option, he's still on that path," said a top Democratic source. The White House, he said, continues to assure progressives it'll improve the bill in conference...
So there you have it, straight from the unnamed horses mouths. Obama wants a public option and means to get it but doesn't want to risk losing a vote on it and therefore prefers putting it in later in conference. Though it's clearly a hostile article, meant to pressure the WH into providing more active support of the public option, the bits and pieces the authors are passing along from their anonymous sources do tend to reinforce Booman's much more sympathetic narrative.
It also makes me wonder whether the WH is trying to make Harry Reid the Hero of the Health Care Battle in order to help him out with his tough election battle next year.