When you read this New York magazine round-up of reactions to the proposal to lower the age of eligibility for Medicare, it becomes clear how much liberals like the idea. It's "smart," they write, since the whole purpose of the public option was to create a single-payer, Medicare-like alternative to private insurance and, as Jonathan Cohn philosophically points out, "What's more like Medicare than Medicare itself?" The celebrations miss the point, however. The public option compromise isn't intended to satisfy liberal opinion. It's intended to convince senators like Lieberman and Snowe to support the Reid bill. If that doesn't happen, then the Reid bill will fail and the reformers will be stymied. And why would a proposal to rope more Americans into a waste-and-fraud-ridden, getting-more-expensive-all-the-time entitlement program allay Lieberman's or Snowe's concerns?