It's now very apparent, if it wasn't already, that healthcare reform isn't going to emerge from some grand cross-party consensus in which Democrats and Republicans come together in the national interest amidst flashing pink hearts and chirruping birds.
There's going to be a wrestling match, with both sides pulling hair and biting. It's zero-sum: one side will win and the other will lose.
Bill Kristol, the inexplicably influential Republican journalist, pronounced today that it's time to "go for the kill".
Bobby Jindal, sidling back into the limelight after that performance, makes opposition to the Democrats' plan his issue.
Republican senator Jim DeMint, speaking on a conference call, comes right out and says it: "If we're able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him."
According to ABC the White House plan to use that last quote to rally their own troops.
The key battle - maybe the whole war - will take place over the next three weeks. Obama wants to get this bill through before the summer recess, which begins August 10. Apart from a desire to get this off his plate (or was it to get that plate down?) - so he can focus on the other fifty massive issues of urgent priority - he knows that the closer congressmen and senators get to November the more their spines turn to jelly. Anyone that Obama is asking to take a risk by voting for the legislation is more likely to say, no thanks, Mr President. So it's now or - maybe - never (UPDATE although Obama seems to be backing off the August deadline...).
(Seeing as you ask, I have no opinion on the actual content of the bill whatsoever. This is because I find American healthcare to be a subject that makes quantum physics seem laughably simple. So I must be frank and declare near-total ignorance of it. But that won't stop me commenting on the politics.)
Jim Demint is the Senator from SC.
Apart from that thanks for an excellent blog.
I live inside the beltway but yours is my favorite US politics blog. Probably because of the perspective.
best
Posted by: Fridjon | July 22, 2009 at 03:11 AM
That's good to hear, thanks!
And thanks for the correction - I've no idea where I got "Bobby" from...
Posted by: Marbury | July 22, 2009 at 12:49 PM
There was a brief moment, reading this piece by Atul Gawande, when I thought I understood health care: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/06/01/090601fa_fact_gawande.
Then I realised: I'm not a quantum physicist.
Posted by: Rowland | July 22, 2009 at 03:30 PM