Reply #51: I'm in Blue Dog hell here in Indiana

[Proud Liberal Dem]

There is probably only one major politician, Rep. Andre Carson (and Julia Carson before him) that is what can honestly be referred to as liberal/progressive. Almost every other Democratic politician here in Indiana seem to be Blue Dogs, including Senator Evan Bayh (*ugh*).
As to health care reform, I'm not entirely convinced that if health care reform goes down this year, Obama won't touch it again. It would probably depend mostly on how it goes down and who delivers the killing blow. Right now, the biggest obstacle to getting a plan through seems to be the Blue Dogs, not so much the Republicans whom, without the Blue Dogs, would be largely irrelevant. He's got at least another whole year left with the current Congress before the 2010 midterm elections to get something through although I think (hope) that he will get something through this year and tweak things later as we go on. After all, like he said, it's important to get the ball rolling because the *natural* state of things is for them to NOT change.
As for 1994, We'll never know whether or not Clinton would have attempted health care reform again had we retained Congress after the 1994 elections or regained control of it in 1996 or even 1998. After the Republicans took Congress over in 1994, there was really no way that he could've ever gotten anything major through in regards to health care. I think Edward Kennedy and Nancy Kassebaum (R-KS) were working on a portability bill but it never went anywhere as far as I can remember.