Today at high noon, MoveOn.org is sponsoring a rally in Tampa, to be held in front of Florida U.S. Senator Bill Nelson's Florida Avenue District office.
At the Florida Democratic Party State Conference last weekend, Nelson reportedly at times had to pause during his address to the delegates, with people yelling "public option" at several times during his speech. What he didn't say at that speech was that in fact, he did vote last week in support of a potential "level playing field" public option amendment introduced by New York's Charles Schumer that went down to defeat in the Senate Finance Committee.
Now, with 5 different health care bills passed out of Congress (2 in the Senate, 3 in the House) the big question is, how do they get reconciled, and what about a public option?
Informed speculation has it that Maine Republican Olympia Snowe's idea of a trigger that would allow for the creation of a public option is looked at favorably by the White House. But several House Democrats (like cult hero Alan Grayson) have been vocal in recent days as asking "Who made Olympia Snowe in charge of health care?"
Meanwhile, President Obama hits the road today, in U.S. cities where you'd think he's pretty popular. And he is, but…
The President travels to New Orleans today.
But only for a few hours.
Representative Steve Scalise, a Republican from southeastern Louisiana, held a news conference in which he called Mr. Obama’s visit a “drive-through daiquiri summit.” Representative Gene Taylor, Democrat of Mississippi, wrote a critical five-page letter to the president. Mississippi editorial writers are not pleased either.
“The theater’s all wrong,” said Lawrence N. Powell, a professor of history at Tulane who describes himself as an otherwise strong supporter of the president. “I know he’s got a lot going on, but I think this needed to be approached differently. You can’t multitask a world-historical tragedy.”
The President then flies out for the time during his Presidency to the great liberal bastion that is San Francisco. However, protesters want a piece of him there. Conservatives, and gay rights activists.
It's not unusual for a Democratic President to get jeered in the City by the Bay. In 1996, I covered a protest when Bill Clinton appeared at a fundraiser at Senator Diane Feinstein's office – that was shortly after he signed the Defense of Marriage Act, which is still the law of the land. See last week's CL story on the gay march in Washington last weekend on why parts of the LGBT community aren't happy with Obama.
(Also write a separate blog on Omaba in SF and New Orleans
This article appears in Oct 15-21, 2009.