Howard Dean’s warning for Obama
Howard Dean on ABC This Week:
If you’re not going to have a public option, don’t pretend you’re doing health care reform.
Should Obama take this seriously, or will the Democratic left accept whatever Obama prescribes? In the roundtable discussion after the interview, Peggy Noonan observed,
Maybe it would be good for the president if the left got absolutely furious about something.
It would be good from the perspective of building Obama’s image as a centrist, but will it cost too many votes in the House?
I guess it depends on whether one thinks that Dean has much influence on the Hill. Some people might dismiss Dean’s opposition as sour grapes. As Dean told the HuffPo, he wanted to be Obama’s Secretary for Health and Human Services, but Obama “decided to go in a different direction.” Call me a cynic, but I have a sense that if Dean were the head of HHS, he would be defending Obama’s ambivalence about a public option.
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