Obama's passive aggessive health care approach?

By GottaLaff

Couple this...

Okay, so the White House is circulating an upbeat polling memo citing a bunch of public surveys showing that public opinion still tilts heavily in Obama’s favor on health care. [...]

But here’s the funny thing: We went back and checked, and virtually every poll cited in this memo also found strong support for the inclusion of a public plan. [...]

The White House memo did cite one poll that didn’t find majority support for the public option: : This MSNBC poll that found only 43% support for it. But that’s the one that generated all that controversy because it didn’t tell respondents that the public plan was a “choice.”

With this:

"The goal is to begin to control the message over the weekend and, in addition, float some trial balloons, see how things play with the public," said one Democratic official who is involved in the prespeech campaign spin. "This is sort of the start of that effort to arm us with information and see how it plays," added the official, referring to themes and talking points provided by the administration to supporters in Washington. [...]

The talking points, however, suggest that Obama will stick to a largely nonconfrontational approach that focuses on reforming health insurance, cutting costs, and helping find insurance for those without it. For example, he is expected to note that in all the reform bills before the House and Senate, there is about "80 percent" agreement on some elements that he also supports. He'll suggest that lawmakers focus on that to begin "pulling together" strands of the bills to produce "a final product that reforms our health insurance system."

The White House is hiding polls that show how popular the public option is, while taking a non-confrontational approach in the Big Speech. Where's the fight? Where's the push that we so badly need? Where's the Obama we voted for? At this point, I am less than enthused.

Yes, I will wait and see... in an unenthusiastic kind of way.

Sidebar: If I used the term "passive aggressive" incorrectly, let me know, but it seemed, in an un-technical sense, to fit here.