On Monday, Sen. Maria Cantwell told KUOW’s Weekday that creating a health care reform bill that includes a public option isn’t on her list of things to go to the mat about. “I don’t think that’s something we can get through the United States Senate,” she said.

Cantwell appears to be among a bloc of Senators who are pushing for a compromise that would create a bunch of small, federally-chartered non-profit health care organizations all over the country. (She touted Group Health as a model for this, though Group Health is not exactly the coop it once was.) The main benefit of this compromise is political: it allows Republicans and Democrats from conservative states to support something that’s not a big, national health plan run out of D.C. (aka “socialized medicine”). That’s also the main problem with coops: they’re not a big, national plan that has the economic clout to compete with private insurance companies and bring costs down for everyone.

It’s unclear why Cantwell—who, it’s worth remembering, is not a Democrat from a conservative state—is having so much trouble with the public plan. But it’s clear she’s feeling heat on this. Later in the day on Monday, Cantwell’s spokesperson, Ciaran Clayton, told me that “everything is on the table, including public option and coops.” (Which is not what her boss said on KUOW.)

Then yesterday, after I’d finished up a story for this week’s Stranger on Cantwell’s odd position—which puts her on the wrong side of public polling, the president, and other prominent members of the Washington delegation—Clayton got back in touch to provide me some background information on Cantwell’s record of supporting public options: she backed Washington’s public health plan when she was in the state legislature, she supported the ideas behind the Medicare prescription drug program in the Senate (though she ultimately voted against the bill), and she co-sponsored a bill last year that included a public option.

None of which answers the question of the moment: If Maria Cantwell is such a fan of public options, why isn’t she pushing the public option now?

Eli Sanders was The Stranger's associate editor. His book, "While the City Slept," was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. He once did this and once won...

11 replies on “Cantwell Recalibrates, But Still Isn’t Pushing the Public Option”

  1. Funny how opinions change when you find yourself suckling at the Insurance company teet…

    Maybe they’ll give her a job when we oust her ass?

  3. Have Cantwell or Murray ever been on the front lines of anything? They’re soft little Clinton democrats. They don’t shake the boat ever….
    I say we draft ol’ Jimmy McDermott to rival Murray in 2010…. At least he’d DO something in the Senate…..

  5. She isn’t pushing it because you’re not actively – in person, not just email – harassing her and demanding she represent the 3/4ths of the American public that wants it.

  6. I know this is a hell of a lot easier said than done, but Washington state Democrats need to start coalescing around a challenger to Maria Cantwell. And I don’t necessarily mean a more progressive/liberal candidate. I just mean someone who is capable of treating voters like adults, someone who can articulate their positions, who actually has positions, someone who has the courage of their convictions, who actually has convictions.

    In a comment on the Cantwell post yesterday, Cascadian described pretty well how our state winds up with Maria Cantwells representing us.

    To me, it’s a weird kind of political Darwinism: survival of the least, the least-common-denominator candidate, the candidate who most closely approaches political nothingness. Our state produces politicians as if we were a restaurant that, out of fear that some customers won’t like the taste of their food, manages to produce food that has no taste at all.

    Sadly, putting Maria Cantwells in the U.S. Senate has a self-perpetuating quality to it. Our nation never makes any progress on any of the perennial tough issues, so we always have a need for leaders who will find a way to skirt any tough issues with toothless “compromises.”

  9. Your info on Group Health is sadly outdated, by the way. Citing an article from four years ago? Have you checked out their plans and costs nowadays? Clearly not.

  10. @3: you are fucking crazy if you think mcdermott would be any more assertive in the senate than he is in the house. he’s been in there 20 fucking years and has little power or influence. it’s time for him to retire, not challenge cantwell.

    i’d like to see a serious challenge to mcdermott’s somnolent grip on the 7th from a flaming lefty firebrand like dominic holden!

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