What the polls giveth, they taketh away

The new news -- that public support for a public option has "rebounded" -- as reported by the Washington Post, was instantly tempered by the same old news: that latest, particular poll finding is one thing, said the Post, but let's do keep in mind, in fact why not "underscore," those "challenges ahead for the president and Democratic leaders in Congress as they attempt to maintain support among liberals and moderates in their own party while continuing to win over at least a few Republican lawmakers."

Because those challenges, it scarcely seems necessary to underscore, are also fundamentally irreconcilable goals. Indeed, maintaining (did the Post mean "achieving"?) the majority's unity has proven more problematic than reaching across the aisle.

Open a party's flaps and you get Big Tent Chaos; close them and you get small-minded, ideological insurgency -- either way, and in any combination, you get a legislative brick wall.

Like the up-tick in the people's support for a public option, there was this week another unexpected "up" -- the Congressional Budget Office released the happy news that the House leadership's preferred "robustness" would not only be cheaper than previously projected, but actually deficit-cutting -- followed, again rather instantly, by the arresting downer of a reality check.

"Senior Democratic aides told CNN that House Democratic leaders are likely to put this version of the public option favored by liberal Democrats in the final bill they are drafting," although Speaker Pelosi also "acknowledged she did not currently have the 218 votes needed to pass this version on the House floor" (she does -- did -- have, maybe, 200 votes).

The "robust" public plan tethers health providers' reimbursement rates to those of Medicare, plus a few percentage points. Thus House liberals' rational advocacy of it: such robustness would pare the government's costs and likely drive down private insurers' reimbursement rates.

But House Blue Dogs, in a Catch-22 of soaring Machiavellianism, have emphasized the need for both cost-cutting and providers' negotiation of rates with the government. One can't, as "Catch-22" would imply, have both, and that's what has thrust Pelosi into a damned-if-she-cuts, damned-if-she-doesn't pickle. Untether or upwardly adjust the reimbursement rates to satisfy Blue Dogs and up go the costs again, which then invalidates the CBO's finding, which then rejustifies the Blue Dogs' self-congratulatory opinion of their bad fiscally hawkish selves.

A fresh House headcount is expected soon, perhaps today; and who knows, maybe the one-two combo of recent public polling and the CBO's bean-counting will swell the 200 count. We'll see. But even if it does, we must still suffer the leveling antics of ... egads ... the United States Senate.

There, as the Post additionally reports, "Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is facing intensifying pressure from liberal lawmakers to revive a proposed government insurance plan ... amid signs that moderate Democrats may be warming to the idea."

Sounds hopeful, no? Well, if that's what you want -- hope -- then stop reading, right about here.

Sixty remains the postmodern hurdle of a simple majority of 100, and yesterday part-time Dem and full-time insurance lobbyist Joe Lieberman delivered an anti-public option speech whose logic blissfully matched the Senate's arithmetical battiness. And there was, this week, fiscal hawk Kent Conrad, saying that "other approaches" -- meaning the mind-bending Catch-22 above -- "could pass."

Or, there was Sen. Ben Nelson, strutting his newly found liberalization through a distant "trigger" or state "opt out," both of which essentially gut the pursued concept of imminent universality.

A few other housekeeping items for the chronically politically depressed: That much-ballyhooed "57 percent" WaPo-ABC News polling figure? -- that's actually down five points from June; and more Americans oppose "the broad outlines of the proposals now moving in Congress" than favor them; and, demonstrating once again that disinformation campaigns are always far more powerful than truth, "More than twice as many Americans (43 percent to 18 percent) say they think the legislation would weaken Medicare."

Even what some would greet as incontestably good news from the Post's poll was alloyed, upon further reading, by the exceptionally disturbing. "Only 20 percent of adults identify themselves as Republicans" these days; and "just 19 percent express confidence in the Republicans in Congress to ['make the right decisions' about the nation's future]; and, going even deeper into the numbers, as the Politico did, "A staggering 83 percent of all independents" -- now the largest voting population in American politics -- "said they don’t trust Republicans to make the right decisions."

All perfectly sound and reassuring, right? So what's there to be disturbed about? Back to the Post: If the 2010 Congressional elections were held today, "Independents [would] split 45 percent for the Democrat, 41 percent for the Republican" -- roughly within the margin of error and utterly outside all the known boundaries of coherency.

Sure, Congressional Democrats are, uh, dispiriting. But even the slightly suggested prospect of a Speaker John Boehner? A Majority Leader Eric Cantor? Pass the Prozac -- and supersize me on that.