General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Obamacare not enough, so some in labor want single-payer system [View all]joshcryer
(62,296 posts)The public option was always on the table there simply weren't the votes for it for the super majority that passed it (it would not have passed with the filibuster rules in place). Lieberman was really the one who did it, and it was probably to spite Democrats.
Reid is actually responsible for the filibuster rules. The idea was that if you had a virtual filibuster you could fast track legislation and have conconcurrent legislation going through at the same time. It was intended to be more efficient and more powerful. He probably could've seen that it'd never work that way. But as a good friend of mine once said, the best thing about democracy is inefficiency, so gridlock is actually a feature, and it is good.
The biggest problem is that the Democrats aren't as unified as the Republicans, so they're afraid of changing the filibuster rules away from that more "efficient" model (they can actually do other legislation while the magical virtual filibuster is going on; this is against the Senate model where Senators are supposed to be "great debaters" and do legislation one at a time sequentially).