Over the last month, I've seen occasional freakouts from the blogosphere about Obama's position on the public option. Obama keeps saying-- as he has since the health care reform debate began this year-- that he wants, supports, would prefer a public option. But throughout this debate, he has refused to call a public option a necessity for the bill. He has refused to rule out public option alternatives-- he and his surrogates consistently refer to the public option, at best, as the "best way" to achieve their goals. He has refused to say he will oppose a bill that lacks the public option. Leaks about Obama's plans for next week indicate this is not likely to change.

This has lead to some consternation among the blogosphere. Whenever Obama reasserts his position that he will not kill the health care bill just because it lacks a public option, we see a bunch of blog posts and comments talking interpreting this as meaning that the public option is "dead", and that Obama MUST DEMAND a public option or they will never vote for a Democrat again.

I want to take a moment to talk about why Obama is unlikely to do that, why Obama probably doesn't need to do that, and how we get the public option passed anyway.

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