The Public Option Is Popular Among People. But What About Among Land?

You know what the public option is? Popular. Always has been, still is. Much more popular than health-care reform generally. And yet it still might not pass. Democrats might strip one of the most popular portions out of a politically contentious bill. Kevin Drum comments:

If Democrats really do lose the House next year (about which more later), 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?

Because the Senate is where dreams go to die. It's not a coincidence that the chamber representing the American people will pass a bill including the public option while the chamber representing American acreage is likely to delete it. The public option has majority support. But a lot of that popularity comes because a lot of people live in liberal centers like California and New York. It actually doesn't have a majority in Nebraska, where not very many people live, or, I'd guess, in North Dakota, where even fewer people live. In the American political system, it's not enough to be popular among the voters. You also have to be popular among wide swaths of land. Didn't you watch "Schoolhouse Rock"?

All that said, I'm not at all convinced the public option, at least as Schumer conceives of it, is off the table. I try not to be naive about the worth of policy arguments in political debates, but virtually no Democrats have actually offered an argument against the level-playing-field public option, and the policy actually answers most of the arguments that they have offered, such as Conrad's concerns about Medicare payment rates to rural hospitals. That's going to make for some interesting meetings, and it might give Schumer an opening.

Photo credit: AP Photo/Susan Walsh.