Arianna: If Obama Supports Public Option, It Could Pass Senate

Arianna appeared on "The Ed Show" Thursday to talk about health care reform and the growing possibility that a public option could be approved in the Senate.

Arianna told Ed Schultz that she's convinced that if President Obama comes out and supports the public option, the Senate will support it. "It's clear that we can easily have 50 [votes], or even 53 [votes] provided the White House makes it clear that they want the public option."

Schultz questioned the strategy of some Senate Democrats who have taken a low-key approach to publicly promoting the public option. Arianna agreed, and stressed that timidity is not a quality that will work. "The reason Obama is in the White House is because he ran a bold campaign. So now, to have him and to have Senators act as though they are actually afraid of the consequences of what they are saying is ultimately going to be self defeating. This is a time for them to forget about themselves and fight for the American people. And ironically, that's also the best political strategy."

WATCH:

 

Comments

[angryangel]

03:56 AM on 03/14/2010

But Obama will not support the public option. Obama made a deal with the for-profit hospital industry to not sign a law with the public option. Copy-paste-Google these articles: ---- Huffington Post: The Real Reason Obama's Plan Doesn't Include a Public Option ---- Huffington Post: Obama, Durbin and Pelosi All Point Fingers at Someone Else for Killing Public Option ---- New York Times: Obama Is Taking an Active Role in Talks on Health Care Plan ---- From the New York Times article: "Hospital industry lobbyists, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of alienating the White House, say they negotiated their $155 billion in concessions with Mr. Baucus and the administration in tandem....Several hospital lobbyists involved in the White House deals said it was understood as a condition of their support that the final legislation would not include a government-run health plan...."We have an agreement with the White House that I'm very confident will be seen all the way through conference," one of the industry lobbyists, Chip Kahn, director of the Federation of American Hospitals, told a Capitol Hill newsletter....[Mr. Waxman] added: "The president has said he wants a public option to keep everybody honest. He hasn't said he wants a co-op as a public option."....Still, industry lobbyists say they are not worried. "We trust the White House," Mr. Kahn said. "We are confident that the Senate Finance Committee will produce a bill we fully can endorse.""

[justobserve]

06:02 AM on 03/13/2010

Sadly Obama won't come out to strongly support the public option. Voters who enthusiastically elected him to make this a reality but somehow he just shrank right before our own eyes! This is mind boggling!

[Mechelle Gray]

05:41 PM on 03/14/2010

Expound please?

[Yikes11]

03:51 PM on 03/12/2010

Yesterday, thousands of us called Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL), criticizing him for recent remarks that undermined the public option.

In direct response, his spokesperson emailed us some big news today:

"I want to be crystal clear: Sen. Durbin and the rest of the Senate Leadership will be aggressively whipping FOR the public option if it is included in the reconciliation bill the House sends over."

This is huge. The fate of the public option is now in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's hands.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has already said she supports a public option -- but now we need her to make it happen. Can you call her now and ask her to include it in the bill -- or at least allow a vote?

Yes, give me Pelosi's number and a script.

[henrypapillon]

03:06 PM on 03/12/2010

I don't know why Obama doesn't appoint Arianna as White House Counsel.

[IndependentBadger]

02:22 PM on 03/12/2010

Obama loses my vote in 2012 if he continues to move to the right. I am so tired of his inaction and excuses. If he really supported the public option he'd fight for it. If he's against the public option he is NO progressive. The pubic option is ALREADY a serious compromise to the Right. Obama wouldn't even START the negotiations with national health care for all Americans. What the hell was the point of voting for this man if he's gonna just stab progressives in the same spot Clinton did?

[eolufemi]

03:34 PM on 03/12/2010

You're either with me or against me huh...that's mighty Bush like of you...

[mayacanogop]

02:09 PM on 03/12/2010

Its like talking to a mirror folks get what I am trying to say

[henrypapillon]

02:57 PM on 03/12/2010

NO

[StopMakingSense2]

01:58 PM on 03/12/2010

Stop trying to please everyone! You can't! That said do what's best for the American people, even those to dim to know what that is.. Public Option... all the way!! People will still have a so called choice even though with the current system they really don't... The free market system has failed us on health care as it did in most of the first world and many third world countries. They ditched it for government run and haven't looked back. Profit based medicine doesn't serve the patient.

[drnking]

01:22 PM on 03/12/2010

President Obama warned us about this in his State of the Union Speech and all last year. He said over and over again that if you boil this whole issue down to the public option you miss the point. So Called Progressives have placed this issue in Jeopardy. They have demanded a public option when Ray Charles could see that the votes aren't there. I wish that they were but they aren't. And what has been the response, to ignore the people who are actually the hindrance (conservative democrats) and continue to place an expectation on President Obama that he can possibly meet. Clearly these guys believe it is not in their best interest to support a public option so they will not. And for that matter the letter of support for the public option is an awful ploy by other democrats. How safe is it for a so called liberal or progressive democrat to sign that letter, when they know it will never get to the required number. In fact I would be willing to bet money that if the bill came up some who have signed the letter wouldn't even vote for it. So now, we have placed ourselves in lose-lose situation. We pass this bill w/o a public option and lose because we convinced the people that the other provisions don't matter, or we get noting. The problem with playing all or nothing is that sometimes you get nothing!

[Rich Zubaty the Rude Guy]

01:45 PM on 03/12/2010

Wrong. Obama just endorsed Blanche Lincoln for god's sake. He's a coward hiding behind the bluedogs skirts and that's just how he wants it. This is not leadership. A majority of the American public wants a public option and the votes ARE there and always have been. Obama is afraid of betraying his deal with the insurance companies and doesn't want to be put on the spot having to sign a bill that includes a public option. Kucinich is right. This current bill throws us into a deep pit of privatization. The government paying insurance companies to administer health care. Corporate Welfare, as if we needed more of that! Without a public option to control costs there is NO bill.

[eolufemi]

03:32 PM on 03/12/2010

I don't know. He's a black man that ran for President and won. The secret service says they got more credible death threats in his first 100 days of office than Bush did his entire term. I don't know that blogging about what you want really qualifies you to call the President a "coward" merely because he disagrees with you.

As for the substance of what you say, I'd like some evidence that there were 50 votes in the senate. I'd also like to know WHAT VERSION of the public option all these other senators claimed to support, and how much would you authorize the President to bribe the hold outs with to get their votes?

As for Kucinich, the guys run for President how many times?

Of course he disagrees with the President, otherwise he wouldn't have run against him.

But if he couldn't beat this guy in a primary, why are we to believe he has more votes in the Senate mind you then the President.

Keep in mind Kucinich voted AGAINST health care reform WITH A PUBLIC OPTION.

He's not for reform.

He's for the status quo until congress antes up single payer.

As they can't even get single payer out of conference, it's obvious he's perfectly fine with leaving things the way they are for the forseeable future.

[AlButerol]

01:07 PM on 03/12/2010

An article appearing on the Huffington Post declared that in a back room deal with a hosptial group Obama promised to keep the Public Option off the table in exchange for some weak cost control promise. Its commonly known that Obama traded away drug price control for Pharma advertising dollars. Pressure from the whitehouse & the FDA helped kill the drug reimportation bill in Congress. Combine that with the fact that he has never put any pressure on anyone in Congress to include a public option and the obvious conclusion we reach is that Obama has been lying to the public and has never been serious about a public option or real helath reform. Consider that from the very beginning he excluded all those who were interested in single payer at the bargaining table while allowing every health industry shill in. People, wake up and start judging Obama by what he does and not by what he says. His actions betray that he has never been serious about real cost-cutting in health reform and supports a bill that will give the farm away to the insurance industry while supposedly making him look like our savior. Stop expecting him to behave differently.

[Rich Zubaty the Rude Guy]

01:37 PM on 03/12/2010

Thank you. I need to hear that.

[IndependentBadger]

02:25 PM on 03/12/2010

I hate every syllable you just wrote.

But it's all true.

[eolufemi]

01:00 PM on 03/12/2010

I'd like to know why bloggers and political pundits that have never held office or at least held a position of influence at some level of government are considered experts and credible when it comes to their opinions on what policy makers should do and are capable of doing with their office.

To date, we've struggled to get 40 declarations on record for a generic question about the public option. We don't even discuss the specifics of the supposed public option these senators would support, so we assume that they would vote for any provision that carries the label public option.

Now of course the President doesn't have the luxury of risking all of health care reform based onan assumption, so they have their own vote counters specifically query senators about specific versions of the public option they would support leading to the conclusion that there are not enough votes for the public option that people want, and the version of the public option that's remotely possible carries with it certain costs in terms of bribes to senators that it isn't worth the fight on the president's part. Especially considering the public option people really want can be fought for specifically in another piece of legislation. Much in the way they are adding student loan legislation to the health care bill.

Again I respect the fact that AH owns this site, but it would be nice if that didn't make her or anybody else's opinion above reproach or objective critique.

[dholl69]

02:20 PM on 03/12/2010

Thank you! I am starting to think maybe AH should stop running this site and maybe run herself. She is starting to be on TV more than Ms. Palin

[Rich Zubaty the Rude Guy]

12:43 PM on 03/12/2010

A year later and we are still ASKING Obama to support a public option! We should be TELLING him he’s a sell-out for making backroom deals with the health industry to keep single payer and the public option off the table. We should be TELLING him we think he is a coward hiding behind Joe Lieberman and Blanche Lincoln and a handful of bluedogs who are doing his bidding by making sure a bill that includes a public option NEVER arrives on his desk, for him to sign, with the national spotlight beating down on his brow. This man does not LIKE making decisions. He is a tinkerer and technocrat. He is giving the private healthcare industry a bonanza and calling it reform. We should be TELLING him he is lying to us when he says there are not enough votes for the public option – by which we can only conclude that what he means is that the public option doesn’t have HIS vote. And we should be TELLING him the only “change we can believe in” left to come out of him will be on the day he is jettisoned from office.

[Bubba Gump]

12:31 PM on 03/12/2010

Arianna, thank you for say the truth with courageous clarity!

The President needs to lead from the front instead of hiding and counting votes -- this isn't leadership we voted for. The President acts as if he can't sway Senate votes; if only Barack Obama would fight for Public Option the way we do! I'm afraid, instead, President Obama will himself defeat health care reform by continuing to "stay the course" and embrace a highly unpopular gift to corporate greed, also known as the Senate mandate. Does the President really want to throw Congress under the bus in November and the American people as well?

[henrypapillon]

11:35 AM on 03/12/2010

And she thinks this because?

[Guitar63]

12:19 PM on 03/12/2010

Perhaps she is right, but if so, is he expending all his political capital? I dunno, I'm just wondering.

[UpFromLiberalism]

11:15 AM on 03/12/2010

the senate has already passed a 'health care' bill

is there a new one in the works?

[Bubba Gump]

12:32 PM on 03/12/2010

The bill passed in the House -- with a strong Public Option.

[ipogo]

10:26 AM on 03/12/2010

........IF.................such a little word, with such a big impact in this context.