Naomi Klein: Neoliberalism is to blame ...

[Rilgin]

99. You are a good advocate ..... However

Not everything you say is true, some is projection and some is spin. I will pick out one thing you said.

You say "Obama fought hard for the public option." Obama ran for election on a public option and no mandate. However, that is not your claim. Your claim is that in office he fought for these. This claim is spin and not supported by Obama's actions.

Obama publicly rejected the House version of the ACA (passed before the Senate bill) which included a public option. Instead publicly Obama said that the bill that came out of the finance comittee chaired by and run by Max Baucus would control the contents of the bill. Max Baucus is a conservative democrat from Montana who was against the public option. Once Obama got behind the Baucus to be drafted version (before it had been drafted), there was no path for the public option. If you pick the author of a bill or a court opinion you know where it is going. It is kind of like appointing Simpson and Bowles to head a committee on social security and expect they will not recommend cutting benefits. At the end we got no public option and Baucus got rewarded with an ambassadorship.

Whether Obama actually wanted a public option and no mandate is a good question and I hope that he did. However, unlike you, I do not know his "private" views vs his public campaign promises. I just know what we ended up with and some facts. Your claim that he fought for a public option is pure spin. In office, Obama quickly abandoned the fight for a public option choosing a different path to obtain the republican version of insurance reform (nixon, heritate, romney) by trying to woo corporate democrats and moderate republicans by TOTALLY ABANDONING any fight for a public option.