Andrew Sullivan: Obama's in the ER, but he'll get his reforms

[nsd]

Times of London

The media love drama, and the prospect of a sudden, Icarian fall to earth by the dashing new president is too good a story to miss. The summer has been crammed with YouTube clips and television news reports featuring the angrier members of the Republican right railing against Barack Obama’s plans to inflict euthanasia on their grandmothers, abort their children and put them in concentration camps.

...

This is a circus, but circuses get ratings, and they also shift the mood. Behind the theatrics, there is little doubt that worries about overhauling an industry as big as the entire British economy have deepened. The majority of Americans, with great healthcare, are understandably wary of change. The uninsured are a small minority and not as politically involved as elderly voters terrified by Republican claims that they are all about to be denied treatment. Obama’s hang-back strategy — designed to avoid a repetition of Hillary Clinton’s hands-on failure in 1993-4 — has allowed opponents to define the issue negatively.

There has been a political cost for the president. His approval ratings have slid from close to 70% to around 50%. That’s not as steep a slide as Bill Clinton managed in the same period, but it’s still worrying. His decline among independent voters is a bad sign and his pragmatism has weakened the passion of his own party base to support him. On Wednesday the president will give a speech to Congress on the reforms. He will need to be on good form.

Nonetheless, I remain convinced Obama will win this fight. Not totally; not without political cost; but win it he shall ....

...

So, tactically, Obama is on the defensive. Strategically? Again, he is stronger than he now appears. When the health insurance bill is passed and elderly Americans are not rounded up into concentration camps and granny isn’t subjected to euthanasia, and when many uninsured people gain a peace of mind they have never felt before, and people become able to change job without fearing loss of insurance, the Republican scare tactics may come to seem absurd.

...

[Cary]

1. This makes a lot of sense

I think the winguts are going to pay and I hope I'm right. They need to be slapped down and they need to learn to be functional.

[depakid]

2. FYI: Sullivan's asserting that Obama will not get a public option

The option of a government-run insurance plan to compete with private ones will be either dispensed with or held in reserve. If, after a few years, health costs keep soaring and the private companies have not mended their free-spending ways, it could be brought back.

[BzaDem]

3. FYI: So are most objective observers.

People here want it so much that they are ignoring strong objective signals that it won't be enacted immediately.

[depakid]

4. That's not what I've been reading

While it wouldn't surprise me, that result's still very much up in the air.

[Clio the Leo]

5. I love all of these positive threads this morning.....

..... some of us are fired up and ready to go!

(The naysayers must have the day off. lol)

[ProSense]

6. Obama is in the ER?

:rofl:

[Clio the Leo]

8. lol times are tough......

.... anyone who isn't saying the President is "sending the country to hell in a handbasket and this is not the change I voted for blah, blah, blah" counts as positive.

Plus ... I'm still half awake!

Now ...... go start me some more good threads!!! lol :P

[ProSense]

7. Sullivan must have missed this point yesterday:

We're going to talk about what we can do because we're so close to getting it done.

[rockymountaindem]

9. This is hardly a positive article

He is essentially saying that Obama can pass a totally watered-down bill and explicitly compares his vision of what our final bill will be like to Mitt Romney's Massachusetts plan.

I hope he's wrong.