Wrong Analogy

Ezra Klein describes the current health care situation in the Senate as hostage negotiations.

The hostage-takers might not prefer to kill the kid, but there's definitely some upside to killing the kid, as it strengthens them in future negotiations. Conversely, the people on the other side of the phone don't want the kid to die, but also don't want a situation in which hostage-taking is encouraged. Generally, you try and resolve that by killing or capturing the hostage-takers, but that's not really an option here, with the closest analogue being a kamikaze primary challenge against Blanche Lincoln, which would come too late to affect health-care reform anyway.

This is actually incorrect.

Ezra still assumes that both sides are negotiating.  To have negotiations, both sides must operate on good faith.  This isn't any more of a negotiation that it was with the Republicans.  What this is here is a plan to demand so much from the bill that the progressives are the ones that kill the bill and get blamed for it.  It's patently obvious if you take into account 3 things:

1. The Senate corporate masters do not want any bill to pass at all.
2. The GOP and the ConservaDems do not want to take the fall for killing the bill.
3. Obama has to pass a bill or else he will be a one-term President.

Ergo, the easiest way to get rid of the Dems and Obama is to have the progressive Dems revolt and kill health care reform.  This was the plan all along.  The Republicans and ConservaDems are there to make the bill so horrible that passing it will be worse than not passing it.  Howard Dean gets it.  People still think the point was to kill the bill.  It wasn't.  The point was to kill the bill in such a way that nobody ever tries health care reform again.  Ever.

The point is to bring down Obama in such a way that kills the Dems for decades and finishes off the Donks for good.