Maddow: Public Option Dying Because Of Dems' Political Collapse (VIDEO)

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow went hard after President Obama Monday night for his willingness to give up a public health care option.

Noting that health insurance stocks did great Monday even as the rest of the market slipped, she asked, "How did we get here? how did we get to the foretold death of the public option and UnitedHealth awesome Monday on Wall Street? We got here through a collapse of political ambition and the resultant downgrading of expectations for this once in a lifetime, stars-aligned political shot at fixing the system that accounts for one-sixth of our economy."

After going through the models for public health care both inside the U.S. and without, and pointing out that even Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) originally supported a public option, she concluded: "Why is the public option dying now? It's dying because of a lack of political ambition. The Democrats are too scared of their own shadow to use the majority the American people elected them to in November to actually pass something they said they favored."

Get HuffPost Politics On Facebook and Twitter!