Hold Fast

President Obama’s calculus ”that by listening carefully and appealing to reason he can bring people together to get results” fundamentally fails to understand that Republicans will not do anything that they see politically benefiting Democrats.  The GOP is not a good faith partner. They do not want to pass comprehensive health care reform. Bringing them along for […]

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Duncan Black is 100% right. The White House has lead on health care reform to the place where they want to see the legislation being. That place does not include a public health insurance option because the White House does not want there to be one. They are not currently trying to get one and […]

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Earlier this morning, I tweeted: “Someone needs to tell Obama that he’s allowed to break McCain’s campaign promises.”
John McCain proposed an excise tax on health care benefits as a means of paying for health care reform legislation. Obama campaigned against this. And yet, the current health care legislation in the Senate and the version supported […]

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Frank Rich:
Obama has blundered, not by positioning himself too far to the left but by landing nowhere — frittering away his political capital by being too vague, too slow and too deferential to Congress. The smartest thing said as the Massachusetts returns came in Tuesday night was by Howard Fineman on MSNBC: “Obama took all […]

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There are all sorts of post-mortems on the Massachusetts Senate race today and what it means for health care reform. But Peter Daou, former Clinton internet operative, has a must-read post on the larger questions of how the Obama administration has failed to achieve its goals after one year. Daou concludes:
Progressive bloggers have been jumping […]

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Chris Bowers is right - the process with moving the health care bill can be fouled by the results of the Massachusetts Senate special election to fill Ted Kennedy’s seat. Bowers predicts another 14-18 days before a bill is signed at best and since the MA election is on January 19th, it is hard to […]

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I strongly agree with both Bob Herbert and Glenn Greenwald, who successfully endeavor to rebut the sophistical argument against progressives who aren’t supportive of the current health care bill as arriving at that position solely or primarily out of a quest for ideological purity.
Herbert and Greenwald both focus their argument on the fact that the […]

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The Senate is set to vote on final passage of the health care bill, which should pass with something less than 60 votes. Separate from everything else, I’m glad that this is finally happening. A step in a long, long process…and hopefully one that doesn’t represent the final product of the health care bill.

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Roger Hickey of Campaign for America’s Future, a leading progressive policy and advocacy organization, has what I think is one of the best arguments in favor of progressives supporting health care reform legislation. Unlike many people urging progressives to support the legislation despite its shortcomings, Hickey is respectful and acknowledges the validity of criticism from […]

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Robert Cruickshank, who does incredible work as the Courage Campaign’s policy director, has a must-read post at The Seminal on FireDogLake. Here is a large excerpt:
The collapse of support for the bill reveals a deeper and growing divide, an unwillingness of most Americans to embrace a flawed process. In particular, progressives – activists and voters […]

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