The Opportune Moment For The Public Option

Image by JeffChristiansen via Flickr

If President Obama is waiting for the opportune moment to leap to the support of a public option, this is it.  The White House has been uncharacteristically soft-spoken on the question of a public option and has remained largely uncommittal in its support for such a measure, perhaps in fear of endangering the entire healthcare reform legislative agenda.

Nonetheless, after a long battle on the Hill and in the media, the stars seem to have aligned for the White House. If Obama wants healthcare reform with a public option all he need do now is reach out and take it.

The GOP Is Beaten

While the tea-party rank and file may not know it yet, the Republican leadership seems resigned to defeat.  An article in Roll Call earlier this week revealed that the GOP is shifting its tactics from those intended to defeat healthcare reform to a strategy intended merely to delay it.  Republicans, it seems, are now “unable to mount a filibuster on their own and calculating that Democrats are on track to send a health care bill to Obama by year’s end, Senate Republicans figure the only way to stop or reshape the measure it to give the public enough time to figure out what’s in it and what they don’t like about it.”

The Democrats Are United

With only forty seats in the Senate, Republicans require at least one Democratic defector to sustain a filibuster.  Democrats do not have a strong tradition of party unity but, even so, the GOP has found that defector difficult to come by in the 111^th Congress.  Of the 26 filibusters brought to cloture votes in the 2009 session, just three have been allowed to stand.

So long as moderate “Blue Dog” Democrats held sufficient doubts about the healthcare reform legislation the GOP could hope to split the Democratic party enough to sustain a filibuster and thus defeat a healthcare reform bill.  That hope is dashed.  Rollcall now reports that Republicans “no longer expect moderate Democrats to stand in the way of passage [of a health care reform bill] – even one that includes a public insurance option.”

The Public Approves

Why the Blue Dogs have abandoned their opposition to a public option is not entirely clear but a clue may be found in Tuesday’s Washington Post.  The Post reported that “57 percent of all Americans now favor a public insurance option, while 50 percent oppose it.  Support has risen since mid-August, when a bare majority, 52%, said they favored it.”

That approval rating is not without caveats and the Post has come under fire for presenting the statistics in a somewhat rosier light than is, perhaps, warranted but while statistics can be spun one way or another, activist citizens are a little harder to dismiss.  FireDogLake reports that Congress has been veritably inundated with phone calls in support of healthcare reform in a massive phone campaign directed by Organizing for America.

Taken together those two stories provide a compelling image of public support for healthcare reform.  The Democratic base remains enthusiastic and energized and the general public favors both reform and a public option.  Republican efforts throughout the Spring and Summer have not weakened support for a public opinion; if anything, they have strengthened it.

The Ball Is Rolling

With the Republicans reduced to delaying tactics, the Democrats largely united, and the electorate generally in favor of a public option the time has come for Obama to enter the fray openly.  The President’s speech to Congress was noncommittal insofar as a public option was concerned and Obama has remained reserved on the topic.

Obama’s silence on the issue has been beneficial thusfar.  By staying out of the fight Obama has allowed the Congressional Democrats to craft and defend the healthcare reform legislation.  This has moved the debate closer to home for most Americans via the healthcare townhalls and denied Republicans and the health insurance industry a single and nationally relevant target for their attacks.

Now is the opportune moment.  Almost certainly encouraged by a CBO report that shows that a public option decreases the deficit,  Nancy Pelosi has already begun to push a robust public option in the House and if Obama comes out now in favor of that bill it will almost certainly sail through that chamber and clear the Senate as well.  There is but a narrow window, however, between the retreating Republicans and the advancing Congressional Democrats for the White House to inject its influence.

Should Obama wait, the moment will pass.