Here is some background that the Huffingon Post story left out, which is that the White House is concerned about what will pass through the Senate. This is also corroborated by Bloomberg and an AP story describing this same meeting. Huffington Post portrays President Obama as against an Opt Out in principle because he is trying to please the insurance companies, and due to concern about political effects on various Senators. The AP story quotes a President Obama official as saying which one gets 60 votes first is going to be the proposal that President Obama will once again start rallying support for. So, if you want President Obama to fight a valiant fight, and fail, then you are going to be disappointed. Remember, a few weeks ago, even the trigger seemed to be dead in the water.
My take is that if Harry Reid can lock in 60 votes in support of the opt out, then we will have an opt out. If not, then we will have a trigger. This will come down to being able to move the conservadems and non-dems to commit to vote for cloture.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2009/10/white_house_to_reid_we_hope_yo.html###
Here, stories begin to diverge. Depending on who you talk to, Baucus either held a routine, informational meeting telling the Senate moderates and members of the Senate Finance Committee what's going on, as he's been doing fairly regularly, or he held a meeting in which he tried to rally Senate moderates to change Reid's mind. Or maybe there's no difference between the two. The first to really speak out after the meeting was Sen. Ben Nelson, and, as one staffer pointed out, Nelson didn't need Baucus to remind him that he was opposed to a national public option. Soon enough, Olympia Snowe was also making firm statements against the public option, and threatening a filibuster.
On Thursday night, Reid went over to the White House for a talk with the president. The conversation centered on Reid's desire to put Schumer's national opt-out plan into the base bill. White House officials were not necessarily pleased, and they made that known. Everyone agrees that they didn't embrace Reid's new strategy. Everyone agrees that the White House wants Snowe on the bill, feels the trigger offers a safer endgame, and isn't convinced by Reid's math.
But whether officials expressed a clear preference for the trigger, or were just worried about the potential for 60 votes, is less clear. One staffer briefed on the conversation says "the White House basically told us, 'We hope you guys know what you're doing.'"###