Long live the public option! (revisted)

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Allow me to post Kevin Drum's Chart of the Day:

And here's Kevin's take:

In case you missed it, Jon Stewart had a good riff on this [the other] night. His question: Why are Democrats so lame? It's a good one! They have a huge majority in the Senate, the public is strongly in favor of a public option, and yet... for some reason they can't round up the votes to pass it. Hell, they can't even round up a normal majority to pass it out of the Finance Committee, let alone a supermajority to overcome an eventual filibuster.

If Democrats really do lose the House next year..., this will be why. If they don't pass a healthcare bill at all, they'll be viewed as terminally lame. If they pass a bill, but it doesn't contain popular features that people want — like the public option — they'll be viewed as terminally lame. At a wonk level, a bill without a public option can be perfectly good. But wonks aren't a large voting bloc, and among people who do vote, the public option is very popular. So, um, why not pass it?

Exactly. (I don't think that a bill without a public option can be perfectly good, but I take the point.) There's no excuse.