The corporate media, and in this case George Stephanopoulos, are just being willfully ignorant about the public option.
1 – What is “death with dignity” for the public option? Is it better for the president to sacrifice it himself? Or convince Democratic leaders behind closed doors to come to him?...
So he's declaring the public option to be dead. Whether that's true or not remains to be seen, but then he asks:
2 – How do you get the price tag down, likely down to about $700 billion?
Wait, I know this one. I know -- and the CBO confirmed -- how to do this. The answer is, of course, to include the public option in the bill!
FACT: The public option saves $400 billion.
So on one hand, Stephanopoulos (and the Washington establishment) are formulating the death of the public option while also wringing their hands and lamenting, How in the world can we cut the cost of bill?!
Are they really this stupid, or are they deliberately ignoring reality, or both?