While Third Wayers like Ezra Klein and Steve Pearlstein claim to know what capitulations Ted Kennedy would have favored, we actually do know the compromise he did vote for, the the Senate HELP Committee bill (PDF):

"I could not be prouder of our Committee. We have done the hard work that the American people sent us here to do. We have considered hundreds of proposals. Where we have been able to reach principled compromise, we have done so. Where we have not been able to resolve our differences, we have treated those with whom we disagree with respect and patience," Chairman Kennedy said. "As we move from our committee room to the Senate floor, we must continue the search for solutions that unite us, so that the great promise of quality affordable health care for all can be fulfilled."

As Media Matters notes, the HELP bill featured a public option:

Contra Third Wayers Ezra Klein and Steve Pearlstein, Robert Reich says the public option is alive and well:

Washington, D.C. is an echo chamber in which anyone who sounds authoritative repeats the conventional authoritative wisdom about the "consensus" of inside opinion, which they've heard from someone else who sounds equally authoritative, who of course has heard it from another authoritative source. [. . .] In the last few days authoritative sources have repeatedly told me that the public option is dead, that the President won't be able to get a comprehensive health care bill, and that the White House and congressional leadership already know the best they'll be able to do now is move incrementally [. . . ]with the hope of more reforms in the years ahead. Don't believe it.

[More...]

Below, I post about Third Wayers Ezra Klein and Steve Pearlstein of the Washington Post and their attempt to use Ted Kennedy to prop up their attempts to promote Democratic capitulation on health care reform. Brian Beutler write a nice post on what Ted Kennedy would have done:

Both of those ideas--that the Senate will not pass a public option, and that Ted Kennedy would support giving up on it--are pretty deeply seeded in the media at this point. But compare that to Lawrence O'Donnell--chief of staff of the Senate Finance Committee during the Clinton Care years--who says that's all wrong.

Senator Kennedy...is not an easy compromiser on health care reform. In 1994, I was in the room when he told the president that he believed the strategy should be a Democrats-only strategy and that we should not be trying to reach out and get Republican votes.

The attempts of the Third Wayers like Klein and Pearlstein to claim Ted Kennedy as one of their own is absurd and anti-historical. It is also offensive. Let's let Kennedy's own proposals speak for themselves - Medicare For All.

Speaking for me only

Ezra Klein and Steve Pearlstein continue pushing the Third Way health care deal. And like Kathleen Sebelius, they invoke Ted Kennedy to do it. Pearlstein writes:

The simple lesson from this story -- and certainly the one Kennedy himself drew -- is that when it comes to historic breakthroughs in social policy, make the best deal you can get, leaving it to subsequent generations to perfect. . . . Although you'd hardly know it from all the shouting of recent weeks, there is a deal to be had here if only Democrats would be willing to take it.

Of course the deal they are pushing is the one they want, not the one Democrats actually want. Nor is it the deal Ted Kennedy wanted (we know what Ted Kennedy proposed - Medicare for All.) Klein and Pearlstein want to jettison the public option. Fair enough. Most Democrats do not agree with them. [More...]

Via Steve Benen and Media Matters, The Economist reports Dick Armey favors a public option. Benen writes:

Armey accidentally tell The Economist that the public option may be a good idea.

"If you in fact freely choose to enroll in Medicare that's a wonderful gift, it's a charity, it's something I applaud. But when they force you in, that's tyranny."

The Economist added, "In arguing against the Democrats' plan, he says that Medicare is a form of tyranny, and that citizens should be able to choose to enroll in the program. This choice, between a public plan and private ones, is precisely what the Democrats propose in a public option."

Now Dick Armey is on board. Now to get Max Baucus . . .

Speaking for me only

Criminal charges will not be filed against New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson in the "pay to play" investigation that caused him to withdraw from consideration as President Obama's Commerce Secretary.

The Democratic governor and former high-ranking members of his administration won't be criminally charged in an investigation of how lucrative state bond work went to one of the governor's large political donors, according to two people familiar with the case. The decision not to seek indictments was made by Justice Department officials in Washington, they said, speaking on condition they not be identified because prosecutors had not disclosed results of the probe.

Richardson's spokesman Gilbert Gallegos has issued a statement: [More...]

While there is much to loathe about New Jersey Democratic officials (a lot of crooks -- you can look up how many of them are in jail now (google Hudson County executive + jail)), but one thing they do know how to do is rip the bark off of Republicans. Gov. Jon Corzine is now in a dead heat with Christie:

A new survey conducted for Stan Greenberg and James Carville’s organization Democracy Corps by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research shows Democratic Governor Jon Corzine narrowing the gap on Republican challenger Chris Christie in the race for Governor. Christie’s lead has shrunk from five points to two points since our last survey two weeks ago, and he now leads 43 to 41 percent, with independent Chris Daggett taking 7 percent of the vote.

Jersey Dems do not worry what David Broder thinks.

Speaking for me only

Two good pieces on the Progressive Block. Ryan Grim at HuffPo:

A majority of the 81 Congressional Progressive Caucus members of the House have vowed to oppose any health care bill that does not include a "robust public option." That threat has kept it alive. With 256 seats in the House and 218 needed to pass a bill, Democrats simply can't move health care reform on their own without progressive caucus support.

Indeed. But if they cave on the public option, they may as well disband. Chris Bowers writes:

What Kagro Said:

The temptation to name the health care reform bill after fallen health care champion Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) is as understandable as it is overwhelming. But with the bill currently still at the mercy of players who are, shall we say, not as clearly dedicated to a product that offers the kind of help Kennedy envisioned, I suggest that we not offer them the opportunity to attach his name to anything less than a bill he would have fought for.

So while it's undoubtedly in that spirit that the Progressive Change Campaign Committee and others have begun their drive to honor Kennedy's memory by demanding that the HELP Committee's bill be passed and named after him, I suggest that it serves us and the Senator's memory better if our essential element -- a strong public option -- carries his name instead.

To name the weak tea "reforms" endorsed by the Third Way (read Ezra Klein) as the Kennedy Health bill would be a travesty.

Speaking for me only

The New York Times recounts Senator Ted Kennedy's final days and how he coped with his illness. It's both sad and inspirational.

President Obama has issued an executive order that flags be flown at half-mast until Sunday.

What's next? Sen. Kennedy will lie in repose Thursday and Friday at the JFK presidential library. His funeral will be Saturday at Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Boston. President Obama will deliver a eulogy. He will then be buried at Arlington next to his brothers.

And after that? Democrats are hoping his legacy will spur support for the health care reform bill. Will the Dems rename the Health Care after him? If they do, I hope it's one that includes the principles he fought for. And that means a strong public option. Here's the letter he and Chris Dodd wrote to Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. [More..]

Dana Houle appears to argue that the President is irrelevant to the health care debate:

I'm still cautiously optimistic that we're going see a decent bill, quite possibly with a public option, clear the senate, and if it can clear the Senate it will become law.

Apparently, the President is irrelevant to those events. Digby sees it differently:

This health care debate is looking like it's finally going to tell us what our president really believes in. . . . The Republicans have completely taken themselves out of the debate and the only arguments are among Democrats. And that means President Obama's going to have to decide which side he's going to put his weight behind.

Will the President weigh in? I honestly do not know. In any event, the Progressive Block can hold the line and say 'no public option, then no bill.'

Speaking for me only

She writes a great one, but this is the best part:

John McCain said the other day that Kennedy's great gift was in making concessions to Republicans. That may be correct, but not in the way McCain meant it to be. Kennedy's great gift was fighting for progress without shame or obfuscation, making the moral argument for liberalism, and always trying to move the ball forward, inch by inch if that's all he could get and in great leaps if the opportunity presented itself. If he made the right concessions, it sure as hell wasn't in service of McCain's pinched and cruel agenda.

He was everything the conservatives hate: a proud, fighting liberal who didn't shirk from the label. Each day his presence was a rebuke to everything they believed in. . . . And all the while, Kennedy just kept going, getting more concessions from Republicans by being true to his principles, than mealy mouthed centrism ever did. There's a lesson in that.

(Emphasis supplied.) Matt Yglesias remarkably points to Kennedy's 1980 concession speech as some sort of paean to pragmatic capitulation - in his campaign to gain pre-approval for an Obama health care reform cave in. It shows how little he understands what Ted Kennedy did and was. Digby got it.

Speaking for me only