BooMan does an excellent job of laying out what’s happening in terms of the White House approach to all of this. It should answer some of your question as well as reinforce some of the angles I’ve been blogging about here.
In particular:
We’re still in the stage of appearing willing to compromise and make concessions. And, most importantly, we’re in the stage where we need to line up all sixty Democrats in favor of cloture. That means all their views must be respected and treated with deference. The administration cannot afford to alienate anyone.
That’s exactly right. My strong hunch is that we will have a decent (if not perfect) public option in the final Senate bill. All 60 Democrats will vote for cloture to break the GOP filibuster, and we’ll lose six or eight during final passage of the bill (which only needs 50-plus-Biden to pass). A similar process will occur with the final post-conference committee bill.
