Almost 9 months ago I wrote my first post calling for an end to the filibuster. Since then I’ve written many that have advocated ending it, all linked from this page. As the months have gone by, and apparently due to the obvious damage the institution of the filibuster has done to pending health care reform, legislation, more and more people have added their voices to the call to end it, Chris Bowers, Jon Walker, and Ezra Klein among them. I’m glad to have the company, and having it persuades me that there’s a reason to update my original post on the public, and to present the case I made there once again. So, here goes.

We cannot seek a public option-based health care reform in the context of an incremental legislative process specifically pressuring for that, and expect to be successful. We must seek and work for, and move heaven and earth for, only Medicare for All, whether we believe we can pass it or not, and then, if we do fail to pass it, we must be prepared to use the desire of others for any reform bill, to compromise just once on a Jacob Hacker-type public option, without entering a multi-stage de-generative reflexive process that will kill the Public Option as an instrument for getting to Medicare for All.