President Obama said he does not think the public option has the votes:

In a private meeting at the White House this afternoon, Obama told a roomful of House Dems he doesn’t think the votes are there to pass the public option, and urged them to take the long view and to support the Senate bill as merely the beginning of reform, Dem Rep Lynn Woolsey tells me.

The Plum Line: Obama Tells Liberals Public Option Doesn’t Have Votes

We can still try, though.

I believe the House should pass the senate bill and the recon bill. This will help people.

The more important point to me is that the President endorsed the left advocacy of people like Woolsey. Some here may say it is only "lip service" and I have no way of seeing into Barack Obama's heart.

Many people have been alienated in this fight. Some see the Democrats are permanently corrupted and seek a third party where none seems to exist. Like some felt in 2000 and joined the Green Party. These are people of good faith and their choice is one not made lightly.

Some others here see "progressives" or "leftists" as the problem and seek to eliminate or diminish their influence. Many of these people are also people of good faith and do not come to their positions lightly.

I supported a different candidate in the primaries (John Edwards) who had great positions on many issues as I saw them, and who subequent events have shown to be unqualified to be president because of personal (not policy) failings.

Those battles were hard in 2007 and January 2008. I was part of the primary wars. Even then, though, I saw more overlap between Obama and my beliefs than I did with other candidates (excluding Kucinich I suppose).

I did see Obama as a decent person. I saw him as left of center, not as left as Edwards' rhetoric and issue positions, but left of center.

At the end of those primary wars, it took me months to endorse Obama, partly because I was waiting on Edwards endorsement, but mostly because of the resentments I had with some Obama supporters. The anger and frustration I had with some people influenced my views. That was a mistake, but I am human.

We have just been through a version of those wars. We will lose some people on either side of the divide I described above, and I don't think that is good, but it may be inevitable.

My hope is we can create a coalition, a popular front as Meteor Blades calls it, around the beliefs we do share and in opposition to the radical right wing that controls the Republican Party.

And we will fight again. It is in the nature of a coalition where left and center come together. (The center really is in the Democratic Party because the Republicans are dominated by the extreme right wing. Goldwater and Reagan won and the Rockerfeller Republicans have long migrated into the Democratic Party, just as southern racists inhabit the Republican Party). So we will have disputes again and fight and be angry. It is the nature of Dkos.

I suspect these words will be forgotten, but they matter to me:

Obama thanked the assembled, mostly liberals, for their ongoing insistence from the left over the months that the bill be improved, Woolsey says. "He thanked us," she recalled. "He said the bill wouldn’t have been nearly as good as it is if we hadn’t advocated."

Namaste and peace. Let's pass the senate bill and reconciliation bill and help people. And keep fighting for the public option. My only feeling on this is that if we cannot get the PO, we should still pass the bills we can get.

And don't forget:

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