There’s a lot of headlines that could have gone with this post: “Tin ears in the White House”, “???????” or any other snarky stab at ironic cuteness. For today, however, I’ll simply point out that grassroots pressure is having some success.

In short … yes we can!

First the poll numbers:

SurveyUSA just released some poll numbers of great interest. The short version being 77% of respondents feel it is “extremely important” or “quite important” to “give people a choice of both a public plan administered by the federal government and a private plan for their health insurance”.

Most importantly this high level of support stretches across political party affiliation and ideology; and these figures are piggybacked on the numbers who are giving “a lot of attention” to this whole debate (73%).

And it seems the Barack “hug a right wing nut who’ll never support me anyway” Obama machine may be finally catching on (Pelosi already has for sure).

President Obama’s advisers acknowledged Tuesday that they were unprepared for the intraparty rift that occurred over the fate of a proposed public health insurance program, a firestorm that has left the White House searching for a way to reclaim the initiative on the president’s top legislative priority.

(Debate’s Path Caught Obama by Surprise, Washington Post, 08/19/09)

Of course the article goes on in the ever ridiculous ways of today’s bigger media and established political punditry by telling us that this isn’t about broad public support of a “public option” (as evidenced by the aforementioned SurveyUSA poll), but this whole argument is really about intra-party (ie among self described Democrats) squabble. Something from the “left of the left” according to some cowardly, unnamed White House adviser.

But in the end those who are too afraid to have their names in the paper are wrong … completely wrong.

All of use, independents and Democrats and Republicans and Progressives and conservatives and liberals and progressives and old and young and black and white and whatever else we may be .. all of us raising our voices is having the direct impact on our politicians that it should be having.

And when 77% of Americans are saying to include a public option, you can bet it will there in the end … unless we shut up.

Yes we can!