"In the end, he had to bribe some members of his own party to vote for the damned thing....His weak (or perhaps overly-pragmatic) negotiating skills..."

So he "bribes" people and has "weak negotiating skills"?

Is he just a weak negotiator or was this what he wanted all along?

Nancy Pelosi did confirm that the Democrats had voted against their own interests, when in 2010 she went to the WH to demand that the President stop conflating the Dem Party with the Repub Party every time he gave a speech. Why did he feel the need, after rightfully attacking the Republican Party, to always include 'and my Party does it too'?? She twice asked that he stop doing that and reminded the WH how Democrats had gone along with votes they KNEW their constituents were against, making that election season difficult enough for them.

I got the impression she was talking about the Bail Outs and the HC Bill. And she was right.

I don't know why the President felt the need to appease Republicans. He had the public on his side, the WH and both houses of Congress. Sure it would have been a fight. But my opinion is that he is too nice a guy to take on the nastiness of the Republican Party and ends up compromising with them, not to mention who he surrounded himself with. But he doesn't fear the Dems as much and so the bullies win. Then he finds out each time, that no matter how he appeases them, and he has said this, it is never enough.

But I'm just guessing and it doesn't really matter. Congress never should have gone along with votes they knew, as Pelosi said, were against the wishes of their Constituents. No matter how he pressured them.

"Well, that is a question many people have been asking."

...the question you've been asking is why the President didn't appease Lieberman.

They killed the public option to appease Lieberman and others.

They lowered proposed taxes for medical device makers to appease Evan Bayh.

They expanded Medicaid to appease Ben Nelson.

Lieberman was a traitor to not the Dem Party, but to this President. Had he been a Republican and the situation reversed, his opinion in that party would have given the attention it so deserved. All the Dems had to do was to threaten to remove his privileges and Joe the narcissist would have behaved himself.


Unless of course the Party really agrees with him. I sure hope that is not the case.

The Dems who ended up reluctantly voting for this bill are supporting it right now. What else can they do? And that is what Pelosi was talking about, being coerced into votes they did not want to make and then not even getting much support in the upcoming 2010 election from the WH who coerced them.

I blame THEM. The bottom line is the Ins. Corps had the power to twist arms, our Congress has ceded its power to Corporations. And that is why there is OWS. Finally the people understand why their Reps do not listen to them, it really is pretty clear now.

No amount of features, particularly of the pay for play variety, ever fixes building on the biggest problems.

I find it particularly laughable that the fake central problem with healthcare in America is a few free riders that get shit but stable condition, if they are lucky in light of the almost unimaginable levels of pool fragmentation.

The bill is mostly healthcare reform according to the larger insurance companies, with an even better deal for the drug makers.

And Congress turned on them big time.

Furthermore, as Obama stated fairly often, the balance between Executive and Legislature has become horribly skewed in favor of the Executive since nuclear weapons made immediate response a necessity.

Finally, Obama in the Illinois Legislature got along better with rural lawmakers than he did with his fellow city lawmakers, and did better electorally in state politics when he ran in a predominately White district after failing in a Black district. He had great skills at bridging sides.

Obama clearly thought that Republicans would put the good of the country ahead of partisan politics if he showed the willingness to do the same and treat them with respect. And he wanted to restore the balance of powers.

We know there are Republican politicians who want this too. While they typically wait until they are retiring to admit it is their party's fault, they obviously must have known all along and were likely dying for a chance to return sanity to their party. However, I think Obama ran into two problems:

1. I believe the closeted (as in secretly sane) Republicans are badly outnumbered by those who just want to win at all costs.

2. Even if closeted Republicans had sufficient numbers, the rank-and-file went rabid at the election of a Black man. Given all the fighting that Boehner has done with the Teabaggers, I am really surprised he hasn't been primaried out of the party. In 2010 we saw a lot of Rightist extremists primaried out, not for being extremist, but for failing to season their extremism with *hatred*.

1. He refused to mobilize the 2 million experienced activists who got him elected. He had an e-mail list with 13 MILLION PEOPLE on it.

Candidate Obama told us that "change doesn't come FROM Washington, it comes TO Washington," and we cheered him on and busted our hump for him.

President Obama told us to "shut up and sit down."

Meanwhile, the Right fought back hard with their own "grassroots" TeaBag movement--they got all the headlines and captured the momentum.

2. Rahm Emanuel. You hire Rahm Emanuel and you get Rahm Emanuel. If you want real change, you don't hire Rahm Emanuel, Chicago politician from the scum-bag Tammany Hall insider deal-cutting school. You hire someone who believes in the goals you say you believe in.

Emanuel doesn't.

I agree he should have tapped into the activist base. He didn't. On purpose.

His choice.

PB

formed at the Heritage Foundation. If I'm not mistaken it was their solution to Clinton's attempt at HCR.

It was their idea to begin with. Now they are all pissed off about it.

It's a two way street though. Today you can find many Democrats/Liberals who are thrilled with the Heritage Foundations idea.

This is the problem with this country. Everyone wants to WIN but no one wants to actually fix anything.

Thanks for the thread, Poll Blind.

PB

watch this video in its entirety. It's fascinating.

The bill's passage depended on getting the votes of Democratic Senators who sided with the insurance companies. From the clip:

They killed the public option to appease Lieberman and others (not mentioned is that Blanche Lincoln voted against both versions of the public option in committee).

They lowered proposed taxes for medical device makers to appease Evan Bayh.

They expanded Medicaid to appease Ben Nelson.

The "bribe" comment was from Orin Hatch.