Friday night, Rep. Keith Ellison appeared on TPT’s Almanac. During his appearance, he said something that I don’t think President Obama wants public. Here’s a partial transcript of the crucial part of the interview:

Kathy Wurzer: Politics is the art of compromise.
Rep. Ellison: It is.
WURZER: So how are you all gonna compromise?
REP. ELLISON: Most of us are co-authors of HR676, which is a single-payer bill so we feel like we’ve already compromised. I think that the reality is the public option has been scored by the Congressional Budget Office as saving $150 billion, so this actually helps deal with the fiscal responsibility issues…It offers choice, which is a good thing…
Eric Eskola: Isn’t the public option really just a step towards the single-payer system that you want so much?
REP. ELLISON: Yes but the reality is that for many people that’s not what it is.

OOPS!!! That last sentence says everything. Rep. Ellison admitted that the public option is just a step to getting a single-payer system. He then compounds that mistake by saying that people don’t view the public option the way he views it. Admitting those two things during a TV interview, especially after saying he’d participated in a conference call earlier in the day with President Obama and the Progressive Caucus, is a major mistake. (I suspect he’ll start backtracking on that statement the minute he hears that he’s been caught.)

The biggest problem for President Obama is that he’s caught between a rock and a hard place. If he says that he’s for a public option, he’s admitting that he prefers a single-payer system. He can’t credibly say that he doesn’t know that members of the Progressive Caucus see the public option as an intermediate step to a single-payer plan.

Likewise, President Obama can’t abandon the Progressive Caucus outright because that’s a big litmus test for Netroots nation. Dumping them is fraught with political dangers for 2010.

The bottom line is this: President Obama has a serious problem selling his health care plan because people see it as a government takeover of the health care system. Rep. Ellison just confirmed that to the people.

That’s a bell you can’t unring.

Technorati: Interview, Almanac, Keith Ellison, Health Care, Single-Payers, Public Option, Progressive Caucus, Blue Dogs, Democrats, Election 2010

Cross-posted at California Conservative