Barack Obama: Decides not to try at all.

Then, there are the experts like Krugman and those academics at the core of the HRC and MA plans.  These folks ask us to look at very different European plans rather than the problems with the MA plan which is much more similar to HRC's mandate plan.

 A lot of the women she has around her are exceptional and I think Wolfson has been good.

 Excellent point BTD, Obama seems to be running by taking no definite position on anything.  He says things, and his actions don't always match up.  The difference between him and Bill Clinton seems to be the aura thing...Clinton was warm, had empathy.  Obama seems cold and aloof, if not condescending.

If he was afraid that he faced a hostile Congress if elected -- as Bill Clinton did, even in 1992, since the Dems' House majority wasn't very strong, either numerically or politically -- then I could see him hedging his bets about what he would do if elected.

Anyway, in Micro-trends Penn says that the soccer-moms are now 10 years older, their kids thinking about college, they have more time now, more inclined to become more politically active and more informed on the issues that concern them.

In a sense, he would admit himself that the argument that was made in 1996 no longer applies.

I find it odd that one person had dictatorial control over the campaign.  All these reports of how loathed he is within the campaign seem to surface only through hearsay and/or unnamed sources.  To me it strikes me as one of those sub-narratives that took shape simply because -- and for no other reason -- it was repeated ad infinitum and no one ever thought to ask:  "Well, is that really true?"

The Clinton management style has been reported as rather flat in the past.  If an idea is good it is considered on it's merits regardless of the source, be it a staffer or a billion dollar consultant.

If that's changed, then yes.  Clinton should get back to her roots.

Both compromise and triangulation are "the art of the deal", an attempt to satisfy all parties by giving each party something, instead of  "winner take all" in which one party walks away from the table feeling that he has been had or gotten the raw end of the deal.  In a system such as ours, which is adversarial by nature, each party is able to give something up in order to gain something.

Obama's health plan isn't a compromise, it is a hand out to the insurance companies who stand to gain while the workers lose.  He's doing nothing more than kicking the can up the road, instead of proposing a viable solution.  By not mandating an insurance purchase by workers, the risk is limited to those who need insurance, which actually keeps premiums high.  By spreading the risk among all workers it first conditions workers and employers to accept the fact that when national health care is enacted, all people will pay something just as they do with the national pension system - FICA, it secondly spreads the risk among a large pool of contributors and thirdly it allows insurance companies a profit through volume.

His proposal to mandate health care for children, is silly.  Unless he attaches their babysitting money and allowances there is no way to enforce that mandate without attaching parents' wages.  Little children can't purchase insurance, how would he propose that they do?  Why no one has asked him that question is a mystery to me.  It sounds nice, but it just isn't practicable, just as his promise to increase the salaries of teachers is ridiculous.  The Federal government doesn't control the school systems in this country, local school districts do and that is negotiated and contractual and dependent on the tax  base, not mandated by the federal government.