It's Crunch Time For President Obama

The last few days I have been besides myself. The Obama Administration stating that a public option was only a sliver of health care reform through me for a loop. I've tried to figure out what the President was trying to accomplish. One thought was maybe by saying that the public option wasn't a key to health care reform the President was looking to mobilize the left. The other thing I was thinking was maybe he was trying to gauge where the American people were on all of this. I then considered maybe the President felt that he needed to get a health care reform bill passed even if there was no public option.

Of all three, I'm really hoping that he wanted to mobilize the left. Passing health care reform bill without a public option is not really reform. Politically, if a health care reform bill is passed without a public option, the President will still not get Republican votes and he will lose Democratic support and alienate the base. In my opinion, the President needs to push the public option and let the chips fall where they may. While I admire President Obama's attempt to change the bitter partisanship of Washington, it takes two to tango and the Republicans want no part of the bipartisan dance. That is why the President needs to lean on the Democrats to pass a bill with a public option and put an end of it.