Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid loves to reference his days as a tough-as-nails prizefighter, and sadly, predictably, or absurdly (depending on how you look at it), Harry is in a fight right now. For his seat—not as Majority Leader, but as Senator. Let’s see how he spars:

“People wonder why I’ve been reaching out to Republicans. I’m trying to get a bipartisan bill,” Reid said, going on to explain that he did not have enough votes in the Democratic caucus to produce a filibuster-proof majority.

But Reid – as he has in the past – left open the possibility of pushing through a bill with reconciliation, which requires a bare minimum of 51 votes to pass.

“If we can’t do a bipartisan bill, we can do a partisan bill,” he said, adding: “I don’t want to do that.”

Reid also sought to extinguish questions over whether he supported the so-called public option, the most hotly debated aspect of the reform debate. Reid has remained mum on the issue.

“I’ve told people, whoever will listen, I’m in favor of the public option,” Reid told one questioner.

That’s where the Politico story ends. . . which is [sigh] not where the quote ends. So, I give special thanks to Brian Beutler for. . . the rest of the story:

During a tele-townhall with constituents today, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he supports a public option…but then he added an extremely important caveat. Reid said he doesn’t think the public option ought to be a government run program like Medicare, but instead favors a "private entity that has direction from the federal government so people that don’t fall within the parameters of being able to get insurance from their employers, they would have a place to go. "

Beutler thinks that sounds suspiciously like Reid prefers the much-discredited “co-op” “plan” being offered up by Sen. Kent Conrad. A problem, he notes, because Reid will have more than a little to do with how any co-op kabuki is merged with the HELP committee bill that contains the late Sen. Kennedy’s true, government-administered public option.

Beutler, unlike Alex Isenstadt at Politico, thought this made Reid’s weasel words worthy of a follow-up:

Reid spokesman Jim Manley emails in that Reid’s preference is for a "public option," but would not confirm that Reid means "public option" as commonly understood: an insurance program run by the Department of Health and Human Services or another government body.

Now that’s giving ‘em hell, huh? What a fighter that kid from Searchlight is.

In his “defense,” Reid is hardly the only Democrat making chicken sounds from his co-op coop. California’s Feinstein fell back on the co-op cop-out today, too. And Conrad—acting for his state BCBS buddies who stand to profit mightily under a co-op conversion—has gone as far as to say a real public option is “dead” in the Senate.

Which means that all of these Senators—and many more, like those in the Baucus caucus—have chosen to fight for the insurance industry over the people that went to the polls and voted them all government jobs with government health care.

Which also means that at the end of the day, it is still the people’s house—the House—where we fight to make a health care bill one that embodies real reform, one supported by three-quarters of Americans, one that, as Senator Kennedy warned before his passing, doesn’t just “shuffle paper.” One that contains the choice of a robust public option.

That’s why it continues to be important to push your representative to pledge support. And why, if you can, you might consider showing appreciation for those that have vowed to fight for your interests instead of an insurance industry bailout.

I mean really fight. Not “boxer Harry Reid” fight.


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