The Blue Dogs are undergoing a similar fate on the Democratic side as well

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Leonidas, this line of yours intrigues me. Are you saying that Libs are purging Blue Dogs? Over what issues? Please say more, and give examples.

They even can't get that right. Where's the “trigger lock” amendment in waiting?

[grin]

This effort, run mainly by lib Dems from the start, has never been about health care “reform,” but about the takeover of health care by the federal government. Incrementalism has once again been chosen as the strategy (because rushing to “Medicare for All” promptly is rejected by the public; it already is recoiling from some of the worst of what the Dems are doing this year), and the “public option” (which will gradually displace, then replace, the private sector; the insurers are of short-to-medium term use only) is the core, essence, the true substance in this incrementalist takeover strategy.

Plus, it is the grand prize of the House (and of the lib Dems) related to this issue by the ambitious, reckless lib Dems this year (just as the most radical and repellent global-warming-politics-based features of the “climate” and energy policy legislation were, earlier) is the “public option.”

Take away that prize, and the lib Dems and the House lose. They have FAILURE written on them.

It's their Waterloo.

You and I disagree with the healthcare bill, but we agree that it needs fixed. And as long as they scurry to find ways to make their real constituents money (insurance corps, pharmaceutical companies, trial lawyers, unions, and healthcare workers); nothing real will get passed.
(notice: I included groups that typically benefit from both Reps and Dems).

They would never face down those entities for real reform, because they'd lose their money. And since the Constitution was created “of the Corporation, for the corporation, and by the Corporation”, that'll never happen.

Given the current positions of the Republican party on this issue, please define bipartisanship. So far as I can tell the only thing the Republican party would find acceptable is a “reform bill” so watered down that it would accomplish nothing. I really am curious about what makes you think any true bipartisanship is possible while still doing the hard things that would be needed to make the word reform meaningful.

The Blue Dogs are undergoing a similar fate on the Democratic side as well.

Pelosi's task is to end the incoherence of the lib House Dems (inmates) and get them working purposefully, albeit for a bad purpose, once more.

Anything with a public option in it is the key to judging success or failure. The public option was never dead, to date; the House needs it in order to retain any kind of serious (by lib Dem standards) bargaining position. The public option can be removed from conference legislation, but has to be in the House's going into the negotiations. It is much less important how “strong” or “weak” the option actually is, other than that obviously the stronger it is, the stronger the initial House bargaining position will be.

It's not Obama that has the real “defeat” if he fails to get legislation signed this year (an arbitrary and impatient requirement). It will be Pelosi, but not only her, but the House Dems, who will be the losers, if the House doesn't agree on a public option product to send to conference negotiations.

Pelosi's test later will be how far left she can get the compromise legislation to be pulled. A bigger test she would set for herself (and to a lesser extent for the House) would be a public insistence on the public option at conference time. Any threat to reject conference legislation without a public option will backfire first if the Senate is opposed to it or the public views the House position as more lib Dem excess, but even more strongly if she makes that threat and then legislation without the public option is approved by the House anyway. She also loses if legislation without a public option is approved by Obama, though the mainstream public wouldn't be surprised by this. (Obama and other more practical-exploitive lib Dems will happily sign and hold aloft any piece of paper with “health care” as part of its title.)