And although the White House has been forced to soften their stance on HC proposals, Pelosi is vowing to pass the unpopular legislation -including a public option- later this month. But that's just cloud talk, IMO... SanFranNan is also the one who told us there'd be "500 million jobs lost a month" if we didn't pass the bloated and ineffective Porkulus bill- this crazy old bird says all sorts of things.
Back in reality, Democrats in the House are starting to smell a loser, and can increasingly envision an scenario in which they put their neck-on-the-line for Obama, only to have the bill stopped cold in the Senate- and they don't feel like being bagholders for a President who's poll numbers are in the toilet himself. It's not only the Blue Dogs anymore, either- opposition is nuanced and varied.
We now hear of how the President needs to "restore a sense of crisis" to pass this HC "reform"- however since most Americans don't feel there's any crisis here that calls for spending trillions in the midst of a harsh recession, this would require him to lay some sort of alarmist fiction on us. Not a stretch for Barrack, but that doesn't mean anyone's going to buy it now that he's squandered most of his credibility.
Besides, Smitty at The Other McCain sees plenty of crisis in the raging ObamaCare debate... just not the type the White House is looking for.
Just sit-back and watch the rats scatter if Obama slips any farther in the polls... which would mean low 40s- or even in the 30s... ouch. Or, if public opposition to this legislation gets one speck worse...
But this all now seems a looming certainty... as Dan Riehl told us, over 10,000 protesters gathered in Illinois yesterday for a TEA party demonstration (pic links too). Team Obama's slander of this patriotic citizen's movement has clearly backfired... along with just about everything else his crew has employed to smother/smear those opposed to his outrageous agenda.
The Hill reports:
At least 23 House Democrats already have told constituents or hometown media that they oppose the massive healthcare overhaul touted by President Barack Obama.
If Republicans offer the blanket opposition they’ve promised, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) can afford to lose only 38 members of her 256-member caucus and still pass the bill.
... But deleting the public option won’t make life easier for Pelosi.
At least 60 liberal Democrats have pledged to vote against a healthcare bill with no public option, which they view as watered-down reform.
Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) has said dropping the public option completely would lose 100 Democratic votes.This Illinois post-turtle doesn't have much experience at making difficult and/or principled decisions- but still worse for Obama, being pragmatic might not help anymore- there's no apparent face-saving victory through compromise remaining. And it may not pass with OR without the public option at this point. There remains a lot of undecided votes too, but it's hard to imagine them all going the Democrats' way, given the unpopularity of the bill and with the Dear Leader's mojo evaporating.
Morris:
He obviously can’t get 60 votes in the Senate for his health-care proposals in their current form. No Republican will support them, and moderate Democrats aren’t likely to vote with him.
If he tries to pass it with 50 votes, using so-called reconciliation procedures, he may also fail — because he’d also lose the votes of less-moderate Democrats who’d quail at using parliamentary tricks to pass such a radical, unpopular program.
If Obama waters down his proposals to attract moderate support, he’d lose votes on the left — perhaps more than he’d gain, at this point.
Yet the longer he takes to resolve this political problem, the more his ratings will slip — diminishing his power to achieve anything. No president with support in the 30s would be able to push through a program like his health-care agenda.
It now looks like health-care reform will cripple the Obama presidency, as it did Bill Clinton’s in 1993.
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Krauthammer:
After a disastrous summer -- mistaking his mandate, believing his press, centralizing power, governing left, disdaining citizens for (of all things) organizing
- Obama is in trouble.
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This is surely a plausible outcome in this month's coming drama... one from which our Narcissist-in-Chief would have great difficulty recovering from by mid-terms -a mere 15 mos from now- if ever.
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-more here-
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UPDATE #2: Sept 10th:
Karl Rove seems to think that the president
is in trouble, too- and he looks at the precarious position