What other option do Congressional Democrats have? Sens. Ben Nelson (D-NE) and Joe Lieberman (ID-CT) have announced that they’ll vote against legislation containing the “compromise”, which is really just the public option with a more pleasant name. Reid can’t even get past cloture without their votes.

Barring a purchase of their votes, which seems rather unlikely, the “compromise” will have to be removed. Harkin’s just coming to terms with reality.

Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) just walked walked into the Democrats all-important caucus meeting tonight sounding defeatest about the chance that a Medicare buy-in or public option trigger will survive Sen. Joe Lieberman’s (I-CT) decision to block the compromises this weekend.

Asked by a reporter if the Medicare buy-in will be pulled out, Harkin said “looks that way,” before praising a Democratic health care bill without the two public option compromises.

“There’s enough good in this bill that even without those two, we gotta move,” he said. “All the insurance reforms, all the stuff we wrote so hard for prevention and wellness in there, the workforce development issues that we have in there, the reimbursement based on quality not on quantity — there’s good stuff in this bill. It’s a giant step forward, changing the paradigm of health care in America.”

Harkin’s bargaining. He’s sorely disappointed and it’s likely to leave egg on the faces of Congressional Democrats. So he’s pointing out all of those totally awesome elements in the bill which, incidentally, don’t include the one thing liberal activists truly wanted: socialized healthcare.

We shall see.