Tom Maguire on Obama’s strategy for relaunching health care by hedging on the public option:

This is classic Obama, who has made a carer of positioning himself as the voice of calm reason intermediating between the loonies of the left (Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright) and the crazies of the right (Sen. Tom Coburn, his unrepentant racist grandmother). Obama will want to assure moderates and centrists that he is truly one of them by pitching some part of the Pelosi-Reid agenda aside.
However! We will see if the “Fool me once” rule is invoked by the target centrist audience. If it is, the result for Obama could be disastrous – if he manages to anger lefties without placating moderates, he may end up losing more support than he gains.