On Monday, Sen. Maria Cantwell told KUOW's Weekday that creating a health care reform bill that includes a public option isn't on her list of things to go to the mat about. "I don't think that's something we can get through the United States Senate," she said.

Cantwell appears to be among a bloc of Senators who are pushing for a compromise that would create a bunch of small, federally-chartered non-profit health care organizations all over the country. (She touted Group Health as a model for this, though Group Health is not exactly the coop it once was.) The main benefit of this compromise is political: it allows Republicans and Democrats from conservative states to support something that's not a big, national health plan run out of D.C. (aka "socialized medicine"). That's also the main problem with coops: they're not a big, national plan that has the economic clout to compete with private insurance companies and bring costs down for everyone.

It's unclear why Cantwell—who, it's worth remembering, is not a Democrat from a conservative state—is having so much trouble with the public plan. But it's clear she's feeling heat on this. Later in the day on Monday, Cantwell's spokesperson, Ciaran Clayton, told me that "everything is on the table, including public option and coops." (Which is not what her boss said on KUOW.)

Then yesterday, after I'd finished up a story for this week's Stranger on Cantwell's odd position—which puts her on the wrong side of public polling, the president, and other prominent members of the Washington delegation—Clayton got back in touch to provide me some background information on Cantwell's record of supporting public options: she backed Washington's public health plan when she was in the state legislature, she supported the ideas behind the Medicare prescription drug program in the Senate (though she ultimately voted against the bill), and she co-sponsored a bill last year that included a public option.

None of which answers the question of the moment: If Maria Cantwell is such a fan of public options, why isn't she pushing the public option now?