I heard somebody telling a confused (even more confused) version of that on the train home from the ballgame on Tuesday night. Happily after years of having a Disneyland AP I've completely overcome any temptation to strike up conversation and make corrections to random people near me.

Personally, I don't care if there's a publicly managed plan. It much of the other stuff I think is important. But then, unless there is a desire to nationalize the entire health care industry rather than just mandating insurance I'm not particularly keen on government ownership.

That is, the key to me is to have the mandate, the solid floor put under what constitutes the minimal acceptable coverage, and penalties and assistance to meet it. If that's in place and successful then I think it is a relatively easy first step to introduce the idea of a public option again in a few years. And if it doesn't work out well then it wouldn't have any way.

I'm so fvcking pissed at Obama right now... Mr President, it's called a spine. Get one!

Robert Gibbs says Not so fast.

I'm going to cling to a tiny thread of optimism on this one. Fool's Paradise, that's where I'm living for a little while.

Obama is floating stuff all over the place. He is first, and foremost, a politician, concerned with his reelection and the reelection of his party. The polling data I've seen (and I'm sure they have their own polling data that shows the same) alienating the independents and a lot of people who have voted for him. Another poll I saw showed that he's dropped around 20 pts in job approval from when he first took office. His stimulus that wasn't stimulus was one thing, and this health care stuff is the other.

Now I suppose I'm with JW to an extent that he should do what he thinks is right regardless of the polls. But he doesn't want lose his vast majority in the house and senate as Clinton did (in the House anyway).

Obama let the conversation get away from him. He waited way too long to respond to the b.s. claims the Glenn Becks of the world were leveling against his plans, and his response was to cave rather than reject the b.s.

I voted for him because he's a calculating man who thinks about every step he takes. Unfortunately he's taken that too far in his attempts to make policy. He's underestimated the ability of the talking heads to make truth by shouting it quickly and loudly. He'd better figure out real soon how to react to that before those ideas take hold in the public conversation or else he will fail from here on out.

He let the conversation get away from him? How many press conferences and townhalls has he had on the issue?

There are certainly those talking heads in the media that carry his water. Andrea Mitchell, doing a "news" story on the health care debate said that the protesters may not know what is best for them. And he HAS had the opportunity to make his point with his own staged and controlled town hall meetings. People just don't believe him. It doesn't go over well when protesters are called "evil mongers" by Harry Reid, and Pelosi implied they were nazis. There is audio (perhaps video) of Pelosi saying in 2006 how she loved disrupters, but that was because she was on their side.

Granted, Pelosi and Reid are not Obama. But he needs to gain some control over them. I think they are damaging him. And like Bush, Obama is trying to play to all sides and will end up losing his base as well as the independents along the way.

All way too late. By the time he was having them, there were already piles of lies out there that people were ready to stand up and shout angrily at him. I knew he'd lost the fight when he put out the pathetic request for people to send wrong-sounding things they'd heard to the white house email. They should have been out there hearing them for themselves and responding. By the time they were asking to be sent them, it was WAAAY too late.

And defend it as "freedom of speech" all you want, the fact is that the conservative movement has all but cornered the market on generating outrage and yelling half-truths and/or lies as an ends to a means. Conservative voices dominate the talk radio dial. And personally I'm glad that people who hold opinions closer to mine (liberals) simply aren't as good at that game. Liberals don't have the taste for the format the way conservatives to, to make a generalized statement. Just look at Keith Olbermann's ratings. He's undoubtedly just as skilled as O'Reilly or Beck, and I do find I agree with and am entertained by much of what he says. But he grew old for me very quickly and I don't think I'm alone. It just doesn't work for his potential audience, they don't buy into the outrage. But there are consequences to that, and I was hoping that Obama would find a way to inject his attitude of reason into the debate rather than just sit back and let it steamroll him like so many others before.