The Turn of the Shrews. Liberal TV to Obama: You Suck!

Liberal TV talkers are positively batshit over Obama's phony backing off government-controlled health insurance euphemistically branded "the public option."

Mike Allen Politico: TOP TALKER -- JON STEWART opened 'The Daily Show' by playing a clip of the president saying, 'the public option, whether we have it or we don't have it.' Stewart feigns surprise: 'Wait a second! What did you just say?! ... No public option? ... Did you just drop public option? ... Mr. President, I CAN'T TELL IF YOU'RE A JEDI -- 10 STEPS AHEAD OF EVERYTHING -- OR IF THIS WHOLE HEALTH-CARE THING IS KICKIN' YOUR ASS JUST A LITTLE BIT. Why is this so hard? Why can't you guys just stay on message? Remember the Bush team? Little bit of discipline, little bit of repetition. They sold us a WAR nobody wanted and nobody needed. [Clips of President Bush, Secretary Powell, Condi Rice, Secretary Rumsfeld, Vice President Cheney, Mrs. Bush all echoing each others' language in the run-up to Iraq.] Salesmanship! THOSE GUYS could sell ice cubes to Eskimos. The Democrats, I don't even think could sell Eskimos BEEP they need -- insulation, heating apparatus. ... Yes, we can! [pause] Unless you don't think we should!'

RACHEL MADDOW, opening her MSNBC show: “Four of the eight most traded stocks in America today were giants in the health business. Pfizer, Wyeth, Aetna, United Health -- and all four had great days today even as the rest of the market slumped. Why was today such a good day to be a stockholder in, say, United Health? Well, here’s a hint. [Plays clips of Sebelius, Gibbs, Obama and Conrad walking away from public option.] You know, when you have a weekend like that, it’s no real surprise when Monday turns out to be a great day for health insurance stock prices. … We got here through a collapse of political ambition, and the resultant downgrading of expectations for this once-in-a-lifetime, stars-aligned political shot at fixing this system … We know that the president both when he was a candidate and well into the current debate as president said that a public option was a must. [Clip of Obama saying: ‘That’s why any plan I sign must include an insurance exchange, including a public option.’] ‘Must,’ he said -- ‘must.’ He has changed his mind on that now apparently. … [W]hy is the public option dying now? It’s dying because of a collapse of political ambition. The Democrats are too scared of their own shadow to use the majority the American people elected them to in November to actually pass something they said they favored.”

ED SCHULTZ, front-row regular at White House press conferences, opening his MSNBC show: '[T]he White House, I think, is dazed and confused ... They don't know what page they're on. I mean, they don't have a playbook. You can't go over to the White House and say, can we have your plan for health care, and boom, there's a 200-pager right there. They don't have that. Now, what they have is a bunch of bullet points and a bunch of ideas, but the bottom line here is that the president I think needs to be more direct and start doing some arm-twisting with some folks that aren't listening to him.'

KEITH OLBERMANN: 'The White House is claiming almost simultaneously that the public option is not essential and that nothing has changed.

NEWSWEEK'S HOWARD FINEMAN, to Keith: '[I]f it is a bargaining chip, I think he's playing it way too early. ... It's not helping his cause or he's looking weak as he negotiates with people who don't really want to negotiate with him.'