Jane responds in an update, and apparently I am “eating my liver” (I thought I was pretty restrained- I simply said she was wrong, and what do you know- she was, and apologized!) because she had a “misedit” that changed “The self-described “populist” was feeding dutiful JournoList scribes like Jon Chait, Matt Yglesias and John Cole“ to “The self-described “populist” was feeding dutiful JournoList scribes like Jon Chait, Matt Yglesias, as well as John Cole.“ Regardless, it is still wrong on substance, because I never took orders or acted as a scribe for anyone. I said what I thought, and I stand by it. Additionally, as a “freshly minted Democrat,” I didn’t support the bill because it was soothing to my former Republican self. It’s her narrative, and we just star in it!
The fun doesn’t stop, though:
There were 53 Senators on record supporting the public option.
Life in a screeching echo chamber often makes it difficult to know what’s happening in the real world. But for anyone interested in staying informed and discerning the facts before they form their opinions, we actually took a good deal of trouble to document things along the way.
I get no small amount of frothing emails from people who say the same thing John says — “we didn’t have 60 votes for the public option.” And I’m sure that during the months he spent eating his own liver in a fit of misogynistic rage, he was responsible for misinforming many of them. An honest broker would take some time to correct that, rather than have another heapin’ helping of bile. But having lived through the “Jane Hamshers of the left” experience with Cole, I’m willing to bet that won’t be happening any time soon.
There were never 50 votes. Sure, there were 53 at one time who SAID they supported it, but saying you support something and, you know, supporting it, are two different things. I know us political neophytes and scribes can barely muster the political acumen as our progressive betters, but I’m going to go on record and state a bunch of them were lying. How do I know this? Because there is no public option in the Senate. If 53 Senators supported it, and we only needed 50 votes (which itself was wrong, as we’ve gone over a million times and you can again relive the glory days of this tedious debate in the comments), then where is the public option.
Oh, yeah. Rahm.
Bonus- I’m a misogynist! I’m not sure why, but I bet it has something to do with Hillary.