Politics is a contact sport, but we're a country seeking a shuffleboard match

[ruggerson]

1) President Obama is to be commended for lobbying as diligently as he has for healthcare reform. Where he legitimately can be criticized is on strategy: the White House was perhaps TOO wary of the Hillary Clinton model that failed in 1993, so much so that they bent over backwards to do the exact opposite of what she did, and ended up having to compromise sooner than if they had presented the broad, rough outline of a plan themselves. It is too soon to say that the strategy has failed: there is no bill yet etched in stone. We have to wait and see what comes out of the Senate and out of reconciliation.

2) All Presidents need to compromise at times. Obama is no exception to the rule. It is not realistic or sensible to expect that the country is ready to move to a single payer model overnight. The transition necessarily has to be incremental, because of the potential ramifications to the economy. That being said, it is probably incumbent upon Democratic presidential contenders from here on in to take the lead on this and to CAMPAIGN on a single payer platform. We will never get there without a serious conversation during a hard fought presidential election season.

3) Obama fits the times. America did not want another extremely partisan President after eight years of Bush failures. Americans are not sophisticated enough to distinguish between a rightwing ideologue and a left of center partisan. They just see that all partisanship is combative. All Americans knew in 2008 is that they wanted a conciliator; someone who could bring the country together. Obama rode a populist wave to the WH that was built on the notion that Democrats could work with Republicans and hammer out policy that benefits all of us.

4) Obviously, for many of us, this presents a Hobson's choice. None of us are going to vote for a Republican, and most of us don't want to be responsible for a Democratic President losing his reelection bid, because we feel he is not partisan or tough enough.

5) For those of us who don't buy the "conciliator" model for the Presidency, the best we can do is keep lobbying and pushing this President to do what is right. He is a very smart man, and he knows what we want him to do, but he (and the people surrounding him) differ with us on what is tenable and what is not. The problem is that the Republicans are playing a quite different game than we are. They are playing full on contact rugby and willing to get muddy in the process. We are still reaching out to them with olive branches. That might have worked well in the theoretical framework of a political campaign, but it is not necessarily an effective way to govern. But, even though we are not going to turn a politician who by nature wants to reconcile people into a partisan gunslinger, this IS a man who DOES listen and responds when his own base pushes hard enough. And his listening abilities may yet move his administration towards a slightly more confrontational model.

[Deja Q]

1. Logical.

K&R

[angee_is_mad]

2. You have forgotten were you are

because logic doesn't work to well on DU.

[ruggerson]

3. a momentary lapse

my apologies.

[PopSixSquish]

4. Well Don't Let it Happen Again or It Might Catch On

and then were will we be? Folks might actually start agreeing with each other and working together to push change and we can't have that...

[ruggerson]

5. that won't happen

we're Democrats.

[Jennicut]

6. Very reasonable and well thought out points