{"id":190846,"date":"2009-10-20T22:12:00","date_gmt":"2009-10-21T03:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/10\/20\/no-balls\/"},"modified":"2009-10-20T22:12:00","modified_gmt":"2009-10-21T03:12:00","slug":"no-balls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/10\/20\/no-balls\/","title":{"rendered":"No Balls"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The word is that the Senate version of the healthcare reform bill will have the public option, but only if <a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/2009\/10\/20\/hill-aides-more-senators_n_327189.html\">Barack Obama actually asks for it<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\"><p>There is a growing sense on Capitol Hill that the White House&#8217;s <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">refusal <\/span>to weigh in more forcefully in the health care debate could come at the cost of a public option for insurance coverage.<\/p>\n<p>Democratic aides said that a &#8220;handful&#8221; of senators who are skeptical of a public plan likely could be persuaded if not to support it then at least to oppose a Republican filibuster, if the administration were to apply a bit more pressure &#8212; <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">or even guidance<\/span>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(<span style=\"font-style: italic;\">emphasis mine<\/span>)<\/p>\n<p>Barack Obama has two problems here: <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>He is desperate to sign something, anything, as in keep him away from toilet paper, into law that he can call &#8220;healthcare reform&#8221;.<\/li>\n<li>He still wants everyone, including the Republicans, to like him.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So he is snatching defeat from the jaws of victory because he does not have the guts to even <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">try<\/span> to win, even though it appears that Harry Reid is pretty much <a href=\"http:\/\/tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com\/2009\/10\/senate-aide-its-time-for-the-white-house-to-take-a-stand-on-the-public-option.php\">begging him for some backup on the public option<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>I know that it is only 9 months into his term, but it&#8217;s already screaming &#8220;1 term wonder&#8221; in my ear.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The word is that the Senate version of the healthcare reform bill will have the public option, but only if Barack Obama actually asks for it: There is a growing sense on Capitol Hill that the White House&#8217;s refusal to weigh in more forcefully in the health care debate could come at the cost of &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1142,998,1046,1020,1173],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-190846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-barack-obama","category-congress","category-healthcare","category-legislation","category-white-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190846"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190846"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190846\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}