Chuck's Game

Chuck Schumer is taking more than a bit of credit for Harry Reid's change of heart on the public option, according to TPMDC's Brian Beutler.

This evening I spoke with Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who was in that infamous Thursday night meeting with President Obama and other Senate leaders--and who has been one of the most persistent advocates of a public option on Capitol Hill. As Schumer explains it, the disagreement between the White House and Senate wasn't substantive so much as it was tactical: The White House had its doubts that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid could really get 60 votes for a public option with an opt out for states.

"The President listened very carefully," Schumer said in an interview moments ago. "He wanted to make sure that the strategy upon which we were embarking had the ability to carry through."

Schumer has been at the center of the fight over the public option from the earliest days of the health care debate--always there to pull it back from the brink when it at times seemed on the verge of collapse. This situation was no different. After the Thursday meeting, four sources in different Democratic offices told me that the White House had suggested they believed a strategy of pursuing Sen. Olympia Snowe's preferred compromise--a triggered public option--might be an easier path to 60 votes. In the end, though, Schumer and the rest of leadership seem to have prevailed upon President Obama that they've picked the right strategy.

"I think substantively the White House probably preferred a stronger public option than a trigger," Schumer said. "We talked about this for a while in leadership and the White House wanted to hear our thoughts--and when they heard them they thought that this was the right strategy to get our caucus together."

I still think the math was bad for not having it, i.e. gaining Snowe Queen and losing several Dems is even a deal Rahmbo won't go for. But Schumer is right on the question of holding fast on the public option: you do have to give credit where credit is due and it's nice to see some spine instead of folding.

Rahmbo seemed to think the Snowe Queen route was the way to go. Senate Dems said no way...but maybe that was the point. 11-dimensional chess or not, the course now has been charted. Harry Reid is acting like a majority leader, the Snowe Queen is out on her ass, and the Dems are ready to forge ahead.

We'll see where it takes us.

(h/t Paul W. in the comments. I do read those, you know.)