I totally agree with this ……..

Via lord_mike in Quick Hits, Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu has backtracked, and no longer supports the public option:

Count Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) as a “no” vote on the public insurance option.

“I am not open to a public option, however I will remain open to a compromise – a full compromise,” Landrieu told reporters Tuesday. “A public option is not something I support i don’t think its the right way to go.”

This is in contrast to the pledge Landrieu signed with Health Care for America Now, stating the following:

Our government’s responsibility is to guarantee quality affordable health care for everyone in America and it must play a central role in regulating, financing, and providing health coverage by establishing…

A choice of a private insurance plan, including keeping the insurance you have if you like it, or a public insurance plan without a private insurer middleman that guarantees affordable coverage.

Landrieu singed this pledge, meaning that she actually gone back on her support for the public option now. She has listened more to pressure from insurance companies and conservatives on the issue than she has listened to the Democratic leadership and progressive activists.

Of course, that is assuming that there was at least some pressure from the Democratic leadership in both the Senate and the White House for her to support a public option. There very well may not have been. In fact, there probably wasn’t much. Can anyone really believe at this point that if the Obama-led White House was twisting arms on this issue that Landrieu would have caved? Does the White House really have such meager influence with her office right now?

This only reinforces a point I made yesterday: progressive organizations and media outlets need to be targeting the Landrieus of the world, not the Limbaughs. If the public option is defeated, it will be the fault of the Landrieus, and of Democratic leadership that either did not place enough pressure on her, or was ineffective in the pressure they placed. And, if that defeat happen, it will signal the end of any possibility of real progressive governance during the Democratic trifecta.

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