Defending the public option

Written by: Mary R on Mar 18, 2010 7:55 AM EDT

Beyond Chron's Paul Hogarth talks about backroom deals and the death of the public option. He makes a good point about the efforts of grassroots orgs that kept the debate going despite the tone in DC:

At this point, it became crystal clear to me this President would not push the change we can believe in – that progressives would have to just do it themselves.

Which is why I’ve felt the work that the Progressive Change Campaign Committee and Howard Dean’s Democracy for America has been so important. Democrats claim we “don’t have the votes” for passing a public option, so the netroots had to prove them wrong – by organizing a “whip count” at www.whipcongress.com: get 51 Senators on record supporting a public option through reconciliation. It was the only pro-active thing to do.

And these efforts – with no active support from the Democratic Party leadership – helped everyday activists get involved in a meaningful way.

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