Via Greg, who always gets the good insider info.
In a private meeting at the White House this afternoon, Obama told a roomful of House Dems he doesn’t think the votes are there to pass the public option, and urged them to take the long view and to support the Senate bill as merely the beginning of reform, Dem Rep Lynn Woolsey tells me.
Also: Obama thanked the assembled, mostly liberals, for their ongoing insistence from the left over the months that the bill be improved, Woolsey says. “He thanked us,” she recalled. “He said the bill wouldn’t have been nearly as good as it is if we hadn’t advocated.”
Woolsey, the co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, who was present with around seven or eight other liberals, says Obama compared the health reform fight to the passage of Social Security and Medicare.
“He was very clear: He thought this was as good as it’s going to get,” Woolsey said, referring to the plan to pass the Senate bill and fix it via reconciliation.
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