I just don't like the smell of this quote from Axelrod to ABC News:
As to the fate of a government option plan to compete with private insurance, Axelrod suggested the controversial concept is gone but not forgotten: "The spirit that led him to support a public option is still very much at play here and so you know he wants competition. He wants choice."
We'll know for sure what the president's position is very soon. If he's bailing on the public option, though, he had better be prepared to lose healthcare reform and many congressional seats next year (as well as 3,000 Americans every two months). And if he intends to drop the public option, but push for mandates, he will have succeeded in proposing my nightmare scenario: a healthcare reform bill that forces us to buy private insurance. Competition or not, this is unacceptable.
Though I want to emphasize this: I don't know precisely what Axelrod means here. Tapper might be reading too much into the quote. I have no idea, and I don't want to jump to any firm conclusions until there's some sort of concrete evidence.