THE DAILY BLADE: Dems Singing The Healthcare “Reform” Blues
“MMM, MMM, MMM! Barack Hussein Obama.” No, this isn’t another preschool presidential paean, but a doleful Democrat dirge, according to The Christian Science Monitor:
Remember Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky?
Anyone over a certain age who follows politics does. She was the first-term Democratic congresswoman from Pennsylvania who cast the decisive 218th House vote for President Clinton’s budget reconciliation bill in 1993 – and then went on to lose reelection in 1994.
Today, as the Democrats work to lock down just enough votes to pass an unpopular healthcare reform bill, “MMM” isn’t far from thought. No one wants to be the MMM of 2010. But there are several who could suffer that fate.
It seems like only yesterday when voters and pundits alike thought President George Bush’s “stubbornness” was a problem? Now, The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz writes about Obama’s “grim determination” to pass the Dems’ healthcare legislation.
Consider this article from USA Today about how the president has dug his heels in and “shows no signs of rethinking his approach”:
Despite the qualms of Congress and the public, “I'm going to be stubborn on this issue,” [the president] said.
He demonstrated his persistence again … when he gave another speech promoting changes he wants to make … “My strategy is pretty simple: Explain the problem to the American people, and keep explaining it and explaining it.” …
[The president] doesn't have a lot to show for the 18 weeks in which he's been making regular speeches to promote his … proposals. … Polls show support has dropped since he's been promoting the plan. …
“There's no doubt in my mind that I'm doing the right thing on this issue," he said in a speech.
Guess what? This article isn't about healthcare "reform." The year was 2005, the president was Bush and the proposal was to allow younger workers to invest part of their taxes in stocks and bonds. Repubs let an unpopular plan die on the vine.
Healthcare “reform” is Social Security privatization all over again, but instead of killing the bill and starting from scratch, Dems plan to resort to arcane, shifty-sounding parliamentary maneuvers.
Despite all of Obama’s jaw-boning, polls show that disapproval of his signature domestic policy initiative has hardened, and using the “Slaughter solution” to pass the Senate healthcare legislation without an up-or-down vote will “do little to keep Democrats from getting butchered in November,” as Investor’s Business Daily so pithily puts it.
Update: In a Washington Post op-ed, Margolies writes that “I had no idea that when I voted for the Clinton budget, I was writing the first line of my obituary” and that “I voted my conscience” on Hillarycare. She adds: “I am your worst-case scenario. And I'd do it all again.” Though she admits she was “a lousy politician,” Margolies urges Congressional Dems to “simply to cast the vote you can be proud of next week, next year and for years to come.” The Stiletto is sure she will soon be regaling her grandchildren with stories of how their other grandfather’s and grandmother’s domestic agenda derailed her budding political career, but that it all turned out OK in the end since she has them to love.
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