Deal with it, liberals

Will Democrats make progressives accept a healthcare bill that doesn't include the public option?

By Mike Madden
Salon.com

Sept. 25, 2009 | WASHINGTON -- A few days into the Senate Finance Committee's work on healthcare reform, a process that threatened, over the summer, to go completely berserk has started to seem a little calmer. Especially for Democrats. For the most part, Republicans on the committee have been completely unhelpful (that is, when they've been awake), resorting to obvious delaying tactics; the notion that the GOP is interested in cooperating with Democrats is evaporating quickly. Meanwhile, the panel's chairman, Montana Democrat Max Baucus, who spent the summer pursuing blue-sky dreams of bipartisanship, has suddenly turned tough, ruling the sessions so firmly that Republicans have resorted to shouting at him.

Just because things have started off well for progressives, though, doesn't mean they'll stay that way. As the healthcare reforms move through Congress, some of the most contentious fights are likely to be intramural battles among Democrats trying to figure out how expensive the legislation should be, how to pay for it and how generously the federal government should subsidize insurance for people who can't afford it at market rates.

And, oh yes, there's the little matter of the public option.

(More here.)