{"id":2459,"date":"2009-10-23T18:52:26","date_gmt":"2009-10-23T18:52:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=2459"},"modified":"2009-10-23T18:52:26","modified_gmt":"2009-10-23T18:52:26","slug":"so_much_drama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=2459","title":{"rendered":"So Much Drama"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Senate Democrats seem poised to include a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/10\/23\/health\/policy\/23health.html?_r=2&amp;hp\">public option that includes an opt-out provision<\/a> for states n the floor version of the health care bill. OMG!<\/p>\n<p>The White House may be trying <a href=\"http:\/\/tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com\/2009\/10\/sources-white-house-pushing-back-against-senate-public-option-opt-out-compromise.php\">kill the Senate&#8217;s progressive tendencies<\/a> in favor of the weaker public option &#8220;trigger&#8221; in order to secure Republican Senator Olympia Snowe&#8217;s vote. WTF?<\/p>\n<p>This is like watching a particularly wonky episode of <i>West Wing<\/i>, only without getting to watch the urgent hallway conversations. Six weeks ago, all the smart money seemed to be on a final bill that didn&#8217;t include any sort of public option. But the political process is unpredictable and chaotic. All it took was a butterfly fluttering its wings to change the climate (in this case, a Washington Post headline re-discovering that the public option is popular with voters). There&#8217;s still plenty of opportunities for Democrats to get spooked and run screaming back to the political center, but for the moment, I&#8217;m cautiously optimistic. <\/p>\n<p>Even if a public option with an opt-out provision passes, more battles lie ahead. Governor Pawlenty is already indicating that <a href=\"http:\/\/thinkprogress.org\/2009\/10\/23\/pawlenty-opt-out\/\">he would opt Minnesota out of the public option<\/a>. Of course, Pawlenty knows that he&#8217;ll be out of office by the time Minnesota needs to make that decision, which gives him the freedom to pander to Republican primary voters. But I hope other state Republicans take the bait. Our state already has a public option (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.dhs.state.mn.us\/main\/idcplg?IdcService=GET_DYNAMIC_CONVERSION&amp;dDocName=id_006255&amp;RevisionSelectionMethod=LatestReleased\">MinnesotaCare<\/a>) and it&#8217;s proven to be pretty popular. <\/p>\n<div class=\"zemanta-pixie\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"zemanta-pixie-img\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.zemanta.com\/pixy.gif?w=695\" \/><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Senate Democrats seem poised to include a public option that includes an opt-out provision for states n the floor version of the health care bill. OMG! The White House may be trying kill the Senate&#8217;s progressive tendencies in favor of the weaker public option &#8220;trigger&#8221; in order to secure Republican Senator Olympia Snowe&#8217;s vote. WTF? <a href='https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=2459' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-1-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Iwau-DF","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2459"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2459\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}