I guess he feels he has the votes do get it passed even without bipartisan support.  You can only offer you hand in peace out so much.

Your contention, though, was not about what kind of president he would become, but whether the shitck would help him win the election...totally different question which you were obviously right about.

It's time for Obama to take a page from GWB! Regardless of the poll numbers or opposition, Bush just did whatever he wanted to push his party's agenda. (whether it was legal or not, snark).

Democrat's have been given the presidency and the majority in Congress. I'd really be upset if they continue to whine and moan and fail to pass any meaningful health care legislation.

But if it was, I want to take a step back and observe that while it's been pointed out that while all politicians tell us what we, or the media, wants to hear -- not necessarily what they believe -- in order to get elected, it appears to me that said politicians are often treated with a double standard and one politician is called a liar pandering to the media while the other one is merely doing a schtick (defined as comic theme or gimmick?).  When they are both ostensibly doing the same thing.

As skeptical as I am about Mike Allen, I guess I'm also very skeptical that we are anywhere close to seeing an end to the schtick.  Obama, for reasons that might require an advanced degree in psychology to understand, seems to need the schtick, needs to retain this persona of being all things to as many people as possible, which means that his focus and his goal become less and less about achieving the best policy, and more about "how can I change my policy to get you to vote for it?"  Am I aware of how things are done on the Hill, how "the sausage" is made?  Yes, I am.  But negotiations that begin with the side that has the strength of the majority just giving away key elements of what constitutes the best policy, is insane.  Insane.

But the other part of the problem is that Obama is essentially sympathetic to conservative arguments. Again, he is part of that curious segment of his generational cohort that, though they may think they are really savvy, actually absorbed the right-wing propaganda smearing liberalism (and the '60s) and elevating "the market" over everything else. (And assuming that Bill Clinton had so many problems with the Republicans because of something intrinsic to Bill Clinton rather than that the Republicans will do that to any Democrat and already have.) It would not surprise me at all to learn that Obama thinks every single ordinary person who shows up at political events wanting to talk about issues for real is "a loser". He may even say it out loud when he thinks no one "important" is listening. He has completely ignored simple facts (like that the only way to be "bipartisan" with a self-declared enemy that refuses to compromise is to surrender or join the other side) that anyone who is paying even a little attention has already noticed. So, yes, he's having a hard time selling his stupid, onerous, destructive "healthcare plan" that isn't about healthcare and isn't a plan. Which makes it awfully easy for Rush Limbaugh to make it sound like a terrible plan. It is a terrible plan. And actual liberals should be saying so.

Obama's run the same play too many times, going back to his Harry & Louise ads in the primaries, to believe it's just a schtick.   Whenever there's a policy dispute, he almost always, in every instance moves right.  That's not schtick, it's instinct and ideology.

First, those who don't want to nominate Hillary Clinton because they don't want to return to the nastiness of the 1990s -- a sizable group, at least in the punditocracy -- are deluding themselves. Any Democrat who makes it to the White House can expect the same treatment: an unending procession of wild charges and fake scandals, dutifully given credence by major media organizations that somehow can't bring themselves to declare the accusations unequivocally false (at least not on Page 1).

    The point is that while there are valid reasons one might support Mr. Obama over Mrs. Clinton, the desire to avoid unpleasantness isn't one of them.

When the Lewinsky scandal broke all the pundits were claiming that Clinton would resign "within days."

But he fought back, day after day, week after week, month after month. And at the heart of this battle was going over the head of the media, and communicating directly to the American public.

And what happened?  He left office with a 60+% approval rating.

Did the Right change their mind about Clinton?  Not one iota.  But they proved to be irrelevant.

This, to my eye, is the real insanity of what's going on right now.  Forget the Republican crazies.  Sure they are crazy, but they are irrelevant in terms of having an effect on what ultimately comes out of this process.  The real story is that the drug and health insurance companies are essentially dictating the terms of this "reform," and Obama is personally on board with those terms.  Is this what the Democratic party has become?  And, to cover the extent to which they have sold out, the Democrats and their propaganda arm (MSM, Huffington and most of the rest of the A-list "progressives") willfully ignore this evidence and fabricate the completely false narrative that Obama is fighting those industries.

On that topic, I'm thinking we can all recall a post Jeralyn put up just before the convention showing the non-stop religious events that would be taking place this year at the Democratic party convention. Is this because Obama hopes they will get the topics discussed in every sermon to win the people over?

Don't tell me that.

I already knew that.

No such thing will happen. Obama was always scamming the left, not the right. What we will most certainly get is some worthless piece of crap that Obamafans will call healthcare reform. It will NOT have a useful public option and it most certainly WILL keep the insurance companies, Big Pharma, and the Healthcare Industrial Complex in charge - this is absolute certainty.

Republicans will gladly let Obama call it healthcare reform knowing full well that it is nothing of the sort, that their plutocratic buddies are unscathed AND the best part (for them) is that they will have thier club to bludgeon democrats with and take back many seats in 2010.

They have to wait for Baucus to fail.