Today the Democratic Senate passed Liebercare and raced to the airport to get home, hoping progressives would go into a customary holiday stupor and simply forget their sellouts to Big Insurance and Big Pharma. 

Forget, hell! Now the real battle begins in the Conference Committee negotiations between the Senate and the House. This is a winnable battle, as long as progressives are willing to take on Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson, two of the most unpopular politicians in America.

How can progressives win this battle? The easiest way is to focus on the far superior cost savings from a public option, because Ben Nelson himself says he doesn't want the final cost to exceed to $871 billion. The weak public option passed by House BlueDogs saves $30 billion, while the robust public option supported by House Progressives would save $100 billion. How can Nelson credibly oppose these savings?

So that's the best battle line. But who will fight for us?

Sadly, the entire Senate is useless. For some mysterious reason, Lieberman and Nelson have made the other 58 Democrats utterly surrender. Even our strongest "progressive," Bernie Sanders, sold his vote to Lieberman for some extra primary care. Russ Feingold says he's "deeply disappointed" about the public option - join the club. But he was AWOL when he could have played the same game of chicken as Lieberman and Nelson by threatening to kill the bill unless the crucial public option was included. Tom Harkin is promising some future fight - yeah, right. Roland Burris proved he's not serious. Sherrod Brown is nowhere to be found.

House leaders are useless too. The three key chairmen - Henry Waxman (Energy & Commerce), Charlie Rangel (Ways & Means), and George Miller (Health) - didn't even mention the public option in their pathetic pre-conference statement.

We are committed to producing a final bill that incorporates the best reforms for middle-class families, small businesses, seniors and our fiscal health, stays true to the values of our members and delivers on the changes the American people desperately need."

That leaves House progressives as our only possible allies in the fight. The question is: will they finally draw a line in the sand and fight for us?

Right now, House progressives are bizarrely stuck on the phrase "public option." On MSNBC this week, both Lynn Woolsey and Joe Sestak went out of their way to say (paraphrasing) "we don't have to call it a 'public option,' we can call it 'cats and dogs' as long as we get lower costs."

Excuse me, but if we want to fight for something - and we want people to help - we need to decide at the outset exactly what we're all going to call it. If you expect me to call my Representatives to demand "cats and dogs," you're simply nuts.

So here's what we need to watch for:

1. whether House progressives give our fight a simple name. A new Quinnipiac poll shows "Public Option" is popular with 56%-34% support but "Medicare Buy-In" is even more popular with 64%-30% support (including Joe Lieberman as recently as September.) Of course they're different concepts so progressives have to decide which one we're fighting for.
2. whether the entire Progressive Caucus unites behind it
3. whether they reach out to non-Caucus Members like Joe Sestak and Anthony Weiner who are committed to this particular fight for a public option

All of this requires leadership by Progressive Caucus co-chairs Lynn Woolsey and Raul Grijalva.

We'll be watching!

Update 1: Here's a promising statement by Lynn Woolsey and Barbara Lee on Wednesday:

"A public option — If the bill requires people to buy health insurance, there must be a public option to bring down costs by providing lower-cost competition to private insurers and choice to consumers."

Update 2: Keith Ellison tweets

Don't Quit on #PO. Still very possible if we get loud now.