Update: If you can’t watch the video, Steve Benen has a transcript.

“A few timid people, who fear progress, will try to give you new and strange names for what we are doing. Sometimes they will call it “Fascism”, sometimes “Communism”, sometimes “Regimentation”, sometimes “Socialism”. But, in so doing, they are trying to make very complex and theoretical something that is really very simple and very practical.” Franklin Roosevelt, on Social Security, June 28, 1934

The White House is feeling the pushback from the Left over talk of dropping the health care public option, and Michael D. Shear and Ceci Connolly report for the Washington Post that the White House is surprised.

“I don’t understand why the left of the left has decided that this is their Waterloo,” said a senior White House adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “We’ve gotten to this point where health care on the left is determined by the breadth of the public option. I don’t understand how that has become the measure of whether what we achieve is health-care reform.”

“It’s a mystifying thing,” he added. “We’re forgetting why we are in this.”

Another top aide expressed chagrin that a single element in the president’s sprawling health-care initiative has become a litmus test for whether the administration is serious about the issue.

“It took on a life of its own,” he said.

I don’t know that I can speak for anyone else, but for me, a plan that creates a big, national risk pool; that doesn’t have to make a profit; that can streamline administrative costs; and which cannot refuse applicants for any reason, is the one part of the bill that holds out real hope of meaningful change. By itself it won’t do enough to cut costs or expand health care delivery, but it would bring immediate relief to millions of Americans.

WaPo‘s Steven Pearlstein argues that a good bill can be passed without the public option, and liberals ought to be willing to let it go. I respect Pearlstein’s opinions, but I fear “co ops” and “exchanges” will turn out to be mirages — programs that look like reform from a distance, and which sound great on paper, but which turn out to be useless for most people who need help. I’ve run into too many programs like that already, and I suspect most of you have as well.

Although I’d rather have single payer, I’d be happy with this: Everyone, younger and older, sick and healthy, in one risk pool. Easy applications. No preconditions to be met. Just say, hey, I need insurance. Where do I send the premium checks? And poof, you are insured. End of process. Simple and practical.

The more complicated it is,the more hoops citizens have to jump through to make it work for them, the bigger the cracks through which to fall. And when I hear “exchanges” and “co ops,” I hear “hoops to jump through.” Maybe I’m being stubborn. But the time has come to be stubborn.

The insurance co op idea was being floated as a possible alternative to the public option, and now the Republican leadership in Congress has rejected it. So, screw ’em. Why are we wasting any more time trying to please them? No matter what the Dems do, the Republicans are going to reject it.

Indeed, Carl Hulse and Jeff Zeleny report for the New York Times that Democrats now seem inclined to “go it alone.”

Steve Benen says,

This week, however, we seem to have reached the tipping point. A variety of GOP leaders explained that Dems could drop the public option altogether, and it wouldn’t make any difference. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who’s become increasingly belligerent about the very idea of reform, said he’s prepared to vote against his own compromise bill. Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) announced that Republicans will reject reform no matter what’s in the bill.

Fine. Thanks for being honest. Now, get out of the way.