Matt Taibbi:
[T]he public option was not a cure-all. In fact, the Democrats had in reality already managed to kill the public option by watering it down to the point of near-meaninglessness. But the notion that our president not only does not have any use anymore for a public option, but in fact “will be satisfied” if there is merely “choice and competition” in the market is, well, disgusting.
I’ll say this for George Bush: you’d never have caught him frantically negotiating against himself to take the meat out of a signature legislative initiative just because his approval ratings had a bad summer. Can you imagine Bush and Karl Rove allowing themselves to be paraded through Washington on a leash by some dimwit Republican Senator of a state with six people in it the way the Obama White House this summer is allowing Max Baucus (favorite son of the mighty state of Montana) to frog-march them to a one-term presidency?
This does not bode well. Worse, public opinion is generally negative, as well. A recent NBC/WSJ poll:
Obama’s overall approval rating in the poll is 51 percent, a two-point drop from last month and a 10-point decline since April.
Yet perhaps more troubling for the White House as it works to pass health care reform this year is that only 41 percent approve of his handling of health care. By comparison, 47 percent disapprove.
Moreover, just 36 percent believe that Obama’s efforts to reform the health system are a good idea, and only 24 percent think they will result in better quality of health care.
