Legal Commentary

Pearlstein Channels Ezra Klein: Public Option Is Dead

By Big Tent Democrat

Congratulations Ezra! You too are now part of the Beltway Media! Steve Pearlstein makes it official:

It's Time to Give Up On the Public Option

. . . [T]here was Howard Dean, the former Democratic Party chairman, over the weekend declaring that health reform without a public option simply isn't worth doing. My colleague Ezra Klein pointed out on his must-read blog that Dr. Dean's fascination with a public option is rather recent since it was nowhere to be found in the reform plan he proposed when running for president in 2004.

Or how about MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, who opined that the failure to deliver on a public option would represent nothing less than the "collapse of political ambition" for American liberalism? The public option has become for the left what "death panels" have become for the right -- an easily understood metaphor that can be used to wage an ideological war over the issue of Big Government, and mostly a sideshow.

(Emphasis supplied.) You've made it Ezra. Enjoy the cocktails.

UPDATE: Ezra is "shocked" to find himself used as a cudgel against the public option. Bah.

Speaking for me only

Full post as published by TalkLeft on August 19, 2009 (boomark / email).