I swear I voted against the candidates who were chanting "Drill Baby Drill!"

But, I have to admit that I did vote for Pat Buchanan by accident once - I caught the error and obtained a new ballot - but I have made mistakes like this in the past.

IIRC over 40 house members took the pledge to vote no on any legislation that did not have a "robust public option." How did that work out?

So the simple answer to your question is "NO."

Not only will there be no public option vote and now Obama, in a perverse Nixon going to China moment, is announcing support for offshore oil & gas drilling off the East Coast, Gulf and Artic ocean. WTF?

Obama made it clear from the beginning that it would be too disruptive to take on health reform from scratch; we needed to work with the employer-based model that currently exists because that's what most people have and what most people like.  You would think a guy who drags out the specter of his cancer-stricken mother on the phone with insurance companies, fighting for coverage in the last month of her life to illustrate what's wrong with the current system would be able to see the "disruption" there, or that he would be aware that rising unemployment and a bad economy had deprived more people of health insurance coverage, and caused many employers to cut benefits in order to cut costs...but that would not seem to be the case.

But perhaps he was speaking of a different kind of disruption - like a disruption of campaign contributions, or some such thing.

"The" public option, it seemed to me, never got much beyond being a stock answer to a beauty pageant question, added to the list of things like "world peace" and "ending hunger:" wonderful concepts, but no real plan for how to get it done.

If there was a fight, it wasn't exactly a fair one, given that single-payer was not just taken off the table, it wasn't even allowed into the room: no discussions, no hearings and advocates actually arrested for daring to try to be heard.  Obama spoke of it in the most condescending terms - and he continues to do so - and had the audacity to ask for better ideas to the Senate bill if anyone had them - knowing there absolutely was a better idea that had not been allowed to be considered - and then, when all the i's were dotted and t's crossed, had the chutzpah to say ALL the ideas had been considered and ALL the voices had been heard.  Liar, liar, pants on fire.

I don't expect anyone walking the halls of Congress or the West Wing, who has been duly elected by the people, to lift even a finger to keep this issue front and center; we will now be told we have to wait to see if the Congress' prescription for reform is enough to save the patient, the economy and our health.  

It was like being offered a half-eaten, rancid hors d'oeuvre when you're craving a full meal.  

The notion that it can be led by "progressives in Congress" adding a new point to their standard talking points, while entirely Obama-fantasy-compatible, has nothing to do with reality.

The conversion of dkos from a point of contact between the blogosphere and part of the democratic electorate into a point of contact between the democratic party establishment and part of the democratic electorate is an obvious strategy, and the way that the site is left open to gangs of online thugs after several "upgrades", whether or not intentional, has played an effective role in that conversion.

The question, however, is how to form an effective blog cooperative that can provide support infrastructure for serving the same role that dkos once stumbled into temporarily, that is less vulnerable to being co-opted.

Give it a brief interval off the table. Cool off the sausage machinery, let the Tea Party spin itself farther out to the fringes, and let the realities of Health Insurance Reform sink in among the various constituencies and influentials.

Then present it as a separate piece of legislation.

Mandates aren't going away. To any individual or employer facing an insurance mandate, adding a public option is a neutral to favorable modification of policy status quo.

To any federal or state budget hawk concerned with the subsidies obligated under baseline reform, the public option is a neutral to favorable modification of policy status quo.

If a public option finds through the Budget Reconciliation window, it can pass both houses this year with room to spare.

If it has to achieve 60-vote cloture in the Senate, it's a narrower pass - but not necessarily a fail.

If it fails, it can take some skin off Republican obstructionists on the way down, and chances of passage improve with each succeeding year (again, as the realities sink in).