LEFTIST WEIRDNESS - AT 7:48 P.M. ET:  You would think the left in America would finally realize that 75% of something is better than 100% of nothing.  No such luck.  Even as the Obama health plan sinks into the mud, facing a wave of popular resistance, the so-called "progressives," who are really regressives, are demanding that the most disliked part of the proposed "reform" plan be included:

Through most of the summer, opposition to President Obama and his health-care initiative has come almost entirely from the right. In the past week, however, the president has been trying to tamp down a noisy uprising on the left.

The immediate cause for the rebellion is growing concern among Obama's progressive allies that he is prepared to deal away the public insurance option to win passage of a health-care bill. Obama insists that he still prefers the public option as part of any legislative package, but some friends on the left now clearly doubt his resolve.

COMMENT:  Look, very few people love their health-insurance company, but the objections to the public option are serious, and based on experience.  Yet, the left demands it as a price for support.  Once again the left demonstrates that what it's really interested in is not real reform, but control.  We often see this in eduational programs in large cities.  The left is more interested in who controls the programs than in their impact.

There is a good chance that the left wing of the Democratic Party will wreck the possibility for any serious compromise, and set real reform, practical reform, back years.

August 22, 2009