Over the summer, 60 members of the House of Representatives signed a letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi stating they “simply cannot vote for” any health care legislation lacking a robust public health insurance option. Since 218 votes are needed for a majority in the House of Representatives, and since nearly all of the 177 House Republicans are certain to vote against any health care reform, this is effectively a threat from some of the more left-wing members of Congress to defeat President Obama’s push for health care reform.

And yet, this threat to defeat President Obama’s health care legislation actually makes these 60 House Progressives the strongest supporters of President Obama’s push for health care reform. To understand why, consider an anecdote from President Clinton’s first year in office.

The 1993 budget battle was perhaps the most bitter and protracted political fight of President Clinton’s first year.  The budget passed by one vote in both the House and Senate, with no Republican support in either case.

At the Rose Garden signing ceremony for that budget, President Bill Clinton took a moment to talk with Representative Bernie Sanders of Vermont.  Sanders, a political Independent who had co-founded the left-wing Congressional Progressive Caucus two years earlier, voted for the budget but did not think it went far enough in reversing the direction of the Reagan-Bush Sr. era.  Rather than defending the budget that passed, Clinton told Sanders that he should have taken those criticisms and “kicked the hell out of him from the left in the media,” because it would given Clinton more space to move the bill to the left.

If left-wing Congressional Democrats say they will vote for anything, and right-wing Congressional Democrats say they will only give their vote in return for specific demands, invariably the right-wing Democrats will see their demands met while progressives end up dissatisfied. This has occurred repeatedly throughout 2009, as all of President Obama’s major legislative priorities have all been either significantly weakened, or blocked entirely, by opposition from conservative Democrats.

Known as Blue Dogs in the House and Conservadems in the Senate, these Democrats cut $100 billion in needed public spending out of the stimulus package. They defeated bankruptcy reform known as “cramdown” that would have allowed hundreds of thousands of people to keep their homes. They flipped their position to defeat “card check” legislation that would have made it easier for workers to form unions. In exchange for voting for essential climate change legislation, billions were given away to polluters and key aspects of the Clean Air Act were gutted.

The same thing would have already happened on health care, were it not for these 60 House Progressives. Without their demand for a public option, once again the Democratic leadership and White House would have had no choice but to just give in to whatever demands right-wing Democrats made—many of whom have already demanded that the public option be dropped. However, by threatening to vote against the bill unless their demands are met, House Progressives actually have a seat at the negotiating table this time around, and the public option is still alive.

Because of the new tactics from House Progressives, Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said on multiple occasions that a bill without a public option does not have enough votes to pass the House. President Obama had a conference call with these Progressives before his major address to Congress this past Wednesday. In fact, he even asked these Progressives to be flexible on the public option in the speech. That is quite a step up for a group President Obama did not even meet with until late April, after he had already met with various delegations of Blue Dogs and Conservadems on more than half a dozen occasions.

Progressives who don’t make any demands of President Obama might think they are being supportive the President or of his agenda, but they are also ceding negotiating power on that agenda to moderate and conservative Democrats. By contrast, this new effort—forming a “progressive block” to Democratic legislation unless progressives receive concessions in return—shows real promise for increasing progressive power.

This article was produced as part of Commonweal Institute's Progressive Op-Ed Program