Go for it, Palinbots. Call those Senators on the Finance Committee. Read the bill. Read their staffers the bill. Flood those phone lines the day before the vote.

Nobody will be there, though. It is Columbus Day, a Federal Holiday.

In short, over the next few weeks we will know for sure whether the President really wants the public option or not. If he doesn’t fight for it, we’ll know he doesn’t really want it. And we’ll also know, since he has the votes to get it under reconciliation, that he bears the responsibility for the failure of the kind of reform bill he promised in his campaign. In other words, if we don’t get that public option we’ll know that, flat out, he broke a campaign promise to those of us who believed in the audacity of hope. Mr. President, one of the bills you promised to pay in return for people supporting you during your campaign is now due. Pay It!

If the blue dogs and conservadems change their minds, then Congress will come around to some form of PO, if they don’t we may get no PO, and also mandatory insurance from the “murder-by-spreadsheet” types. Or even if we get a PO, it may only be enough to increase the chances that politicians can convince people that they delivered for them; but not the kind of PO that might, possibly, solve any of our problems, and it may also do us the damage of freezing health insurance reform until 2015. I’d hate to see that happen in return for a sham PO that has almost no effect on the insurance companies. But I’m afraid that may be the outcome of the kind of “common sense” we’ve been getting from the blue dogs, Rahm, and the President, rather than the outcome of Mike’s scenario.

The question which always arises at this point in a pessimistic scenario, is what should the progressives do if a sham PO bill is presented to them in the final stages of the legislative process? In that case, I think they need to defeat such a bill if they can. If they don’t, they, and the Democratic Party, will bear the responsibility for its passage, and its failure, and the Republicans will return to power sooner, rather than later, and then the United States will accelerate its ruinous march toward plutocracy.

But, if the progressives do defeat such a bill, then the Administration and the blue dogs cannot afford to give up. They cannot take no for an answer. They need a health insurance reform bill, even if it is a progressive bill with a robust PO, and even if its passage means a flood of campaign funds into the coffers of their Republican opposition, because having a bill they can sell as a success is a necessary condition for their re-election, and they can certainly sell that kind of bill as a success; and as Mike Lux says, they can always, in the end, get money another way.

Yesterday, the powerful Senate Finance Committee met to debate two amendments that would have inserted a public option into the committee’s health reform bill. Both amendments were defeated as key Democrats sided with Republicans and the insurance companies. David Corn of Mother Jones diagnoses what ails Senate Democrats. It’s split personality disorder: “They are the best friends of the health insurance industry. They are fiercest foes of the health insurance industry.”

The Senate Finance Committee is slogging through literally hundreds of proposed amendments to the Baucus health care reform bill. The bill still doesn’t have a public option, but there’s a good chance that insurance subsidies will be revised upwards, as Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly reports.

The public option remains in limbo. The Senate Finance Committee is fine-tuning the bill it unveiled last week, which does not include a public option. However, Brian Beutler of TPM reports that Democrats have already submitted three separate amendments that might add a public option.

Opponents of health care reform are trying to pit the insured against everyone else.

Big news broke over the weekend: Evidently, the president lit a fire under Max Baucus (D-Mont) and the Senate Finance Committee by unexpectedly announcing last week that he’d be laying out his own vision for health care reform this Wednesday. Just weeks ago, committee member Kent Conrad (D-ND) predicted the Finance Committee wouldn’t have a bill until November. But Baucus circulated a legislative framework over the weekend.

A power shift is underway in Washington. Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick announced on Monday that a special election to replace the late Sen. Ted Kennedy would not take place until January 19, 2010. With Kennedy’s seat empty, the Democrats no longer have the 60 votes they need to break a filibuster in the Senate. Up until this point, the White House was hoping for a compromise bill that the entire Democratic caucus, and maybe even a few Republicans, could agree on.

The illegitimate process imposed on the Senate Finance Committee in the name of “bipartisan” health insurance reform has sacrificed open government and public debate for the expediency of Party politics and abuse of power.