How Obama’s Healthcare Plan Fell Apart in August
Posted on September 8, 2009
Of course my title is pre-mature, but so is Marc Ambinder’s entire article declaring “How Obama Survived August”. Of course, no one knows yet if Obama survived or not. Marc claims the public option was used as a sacrifice which ended up creating a line in the sand, and therefore giving Democrats the momentum to pass healthcare reform. I don’t think many people find it quite this clear.
At best that’s whistling past the graveyard. But there was no “plan” to offer the public option up for sacrifice and Ambinder knows it. The fact that it is up for debate and perhaps exclusion has nothing – nothing- to do with Ambinder’s spin. It will most likely be dumped because Democrats missed the self-imposed August deadline to pass this in haste so they wouldn’t have to debate or defend the public option.
Their failure to do so gave people the opportunity to dig into the details of the bill passed by the House and spawned the August to remember. To pretend this was all part of a grand strategy, given the debacle that this debate has been for the Democrats, is simply laughable on its face.
Meanwhile, Reid and Pelosi are pretending to be confident as well:
The president told House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., that it is important for them to pass health care reform bills soon, the sources said.
Both leaders told the president that despite the difficult rough and tumble of the legislative process in the last few weeks, they are optimistic that both the House and Senate can pass health care reform legislation.
Which proposals, precisely, do they have enough votes to pass? The public option? A “trigger” for the public option? Health-care co-ops? A mandate to buy coverage? The One might have lowered his demands to the point where only the barest bones reform plan is still on the table; assuming that they do have the votes, the fact that he wants something passed immediately only proves how fragile the coalition must be. Indeed, one of the top Blue Dogs called the public option a “dealbreaker” yesterday — right around the same time that lefty Obama supporters were threatening to abandon The One entirely if he doesn’t cram the public option down America’s throat.
I think this is a bluff, but it’s serious enough that now might be a good time to phone your representatives.
Gibbs is in bluff mode too. Sound desperate to anyone else? Jay Cost nails the answer:
Why is the White House doing this? I think there are two answers that kind of relate to each other.
First, it has begun to believe its own spin that the President is good at giving game changing speeches. But he isn’t really. Nobody is. If the game could change because of a speech, the game would constantly be changing because lots of people can give a decent speech, especially when they have a TelePrompTer…Second, it does not know what else to do. It looks like Congress is at something less than square one. There is no passable compromise that has been proposed – nothing that can win enough votes in the center without losing the left flank. But now the “Gang of Six” has basically broken up, public approval has tanked, moderates are scared, and if there isn’t bad blood on the Democratic side of the aisle there is at least a lot of finger pointing. If Humpty Dumpty breaks and you don’t know how to put him back together – why not give a speech and boldly proclaim how important it is to put him back together?
So, Obama’s speech summary is “Do something! Do anything!” Nothing strategic at all in this panic. A lot is riding on this much hyped speech. I’m sure Obama is hoping it goes over better than Clinton’s did.
Late in September, the president gave a speech on health care reform.
A CBS News Poll conducted in early October showed the speech as having a limited impact. The percentage who felt they had a clear understanding of what the Clinton health care reform plan would mean rose just a bit, from 13 percent to 23 percent. And while there was a modest increase in the percentage of Americans who thought Mr. Clinton’s reforms were fair to them — from 40 percent before the speech to 45 percent — the percentage that thought the plan would make health care better dropped slightly, from 46 percent to 43 percent.
By mid-October, Americans were reacting to the health care plan just as they did before Mr. Clinton’s September 22 address to the nation. Much of the improvement in perception that occurred after the speech had disappeared; Americans were evenly divided on whether the plan would be fair to them, and were also divided on Mr. Clinton’s handling of health care reform. By mid-October, only 18 percent said they had a good understanding of the plan.
The majority of Americans already oppose Obama’s nightmare of a healthcare plan. We’ll see if his speech tomorrow helps or tanks things even more. One thing is for certain. Claiming victory or “survival” today is definitely pre-mature. The big fang of the monster, the public option, didn’t have a good month at all.
» Filed Under Anti-Americanism, Anti-Capitalism, Barack Obama, Democrats, Healthcare, Nanny State, News, Republicans, Socialism, Unconstitutional
Trackback URL
Comments
3 Responses to “How Obama’s Healthcare Plan Fell Apart in August”
Leave a Reply
obamas health plan is an injustice to america
he is just a token
cant wait for a new president
they are all full of it
and liars
obama dosent know his job
The problem with the news media isn’t that they are incompetent, it is that they are the propaganda wing of the DNC. The Obama sycophants in the press cover for and protect him at each and every turn. This is why Americans are tuning the mains stream media out and finding other sources of news. The fact that 250 million dollars in tax money went to the New York Times to keep it afloat is by itself proof that the media is in the DNCs hip pocket. By abdicating their responsibility to be the citizen’s watchdog in favor of the President’s lap dog, they have left Americans to fend for themselves. If we can manage to bring sanity to Washington, I propose legislation that criminalizes news reporters for knowingly promulgating propaganda as fact to the citizens of the nation.