Liberal MSNBC Host Ed Schultz To Obama: "Your Base Thinks You’re Nothing But A Sellout"

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I am grateful that Senator Joe Lieberman is standing by his principles and has seemingly forced the public option and medicare buy-in out of the Senate health care bill. At the same time, I understand why liberals that wanted a government takeover of health care feel that Obama has sold them out. The purists like Howard Dean have called on Democrats in Congress to "kill the bill" because it does not include measures like the public option. But what they fail to realize is the political realities on the ground. At this point, a health care bill with the "public option" would fail. That is because Senator Joe Lieberman has said, and has not been bluffing on this either, that he would join a Republican filibuster of any bill that includes measures like the public option. There are currently 39 Republicans, and if you add Senator Lieberman, there is the necessary 40 Senators to block the bill by filibuster. Obama therefore has only two choices: go down as a complete failure in not achieving the political agenda that has consumed his first year in office by not passing any health care legislation despite Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress, or compromise with Joe Lieberman so that the legislation has the 60 votes necessary to end a Senate filibuster and go to a vote on the Senate floor where it can clearly pass. It is clear from a perspective of liberal ideological purity that the effort should be abandoned without some government takeover of health care. But from the perspective of political calculating, it would greatly weaken Obama and his agenda in the future if he were not able to get any piece of legislation with his name on it that he could call "health care reform." Howard Dean is not in the White House, so he has the luxury of saying "kill the bill." But Obama at this point is clearly not giving up on passing anything that can be called "health care reform" because to give the Republicans a victory in his first year in blocking this bill would be tantamount to a disastrous political defeat for Obama.. Tweet