Maybe Obama is playing it smart by putting "the bill" at the mercy of the GOP

[Armstead]

This is just a theory of why Obama may be acting so noble, by telling Congress not to do an end-run before Brown is seated.

A little bit of that 3D chess...

Thinking ahead -- The biggest fear that is being floated is that Congress and Obama are going to either fail to pass healthcare or pass something that is so bad that people will believe they should have done nothing. Thus committing political hari-kari.


Perhaps, by setting the bar too high to pass this terrible bill, Obama is perhaps finding an excuse to allow the GOP to kill it thus taking it off the table in its current, unpopular form. Thus he could go back to the drawing board and come up with a more modest reform -- blame the failure on the GOP -- while looking like he is doing it for noble reasons.

Maybe....Or not.

[Ozymanithrax]

1. 45,000 people a year die becaue they don't have health care...

Would that then be mercy killing?

[Armstead]

7. I'm not saying he's giving up on it...Maybe the goal is to get back to basics

Maybe the goal is to get back to basics, come up with something more manageable and politically palatable that would start to address the core problems.

Frankly, in its present form, the bill is not really going to prevent the needless deaths over the next few years. It's too fucked up and baroque to have any immediate impact -- an emergency aid bill would deal with that better.

[elehhhhna]

2. Baloney. He's dragging this out b/c it's a way to extort contribs from

pharma and ins. companies. The longer the dance goes on, the more Dems in COngress can extort. Then they pass a bs do-nothing bill or none at all, sigh, and say "oh, well...we tried."

They threaten industries in order to extort money from them. Period.

[FormerDittoHead]

21. Yes. The OP would only be true if some Republicans VOTED for it. n/t

[salguine]

3. You are the last person to still believe that Obama is "playing chess".

[Armstead]

8. It's just a theory

There's got to be some explanation for it

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

4. Judo Chess.

:think:

[Andy823]

5. The problem with that

Is how in the world will he get "ANY" bill passed if this one fails? I don't care how modest a new bill might be, do you really think the republicans will help the president pass "any" kind of health care reform? This bill is a base to work from, even though it seems to be better for the insurance companies than the people. If they killed this bill how could they possibly get a better bill for the people passed? To many on both sides of the isle are in the pockets of the insurance companies and the won't vote for a bill that is better for the "people" and worse for the insurance companies that give them all that money!

No, I think if this bill is killed, we won't see any kind of health care reform for a long, long time.

[Armstead]

10. Actually, a more straightforward bill might have a lot better chance

A bill that was not the be-all and which instead focused the most egregious insults from the private insurance industry, and provided some other way to get moderate income people covered, might have a better chance of getting a few republicans who don't want to look like monsters on board.

[T Wolf]

6. Not this shit, again. People have to stop thinking of Obama as the man-of-the-people, community-

organizer, enlightened liberal who will lead the US and the world into a new century of progress.

Whatever he may have been in his past, he is now a center-right POLITICIAN who has to toe the line of the real powers behind the throne - his corporate backers.

That 3D chess shit was a nice meme, for the campaign. But since November '08, we have seen by his actions that he does not have a liberal bone in his body.

* may have had his "haves and have-mores" but Obama also has his, and they are a lot of the same people.

[Armstead]

11. I'm guessing ypou haven't read most of my posts in the last couple of months

I'm more often an Obama critic. But I have an open mind.

My OP was just speculation about a possible explanation.

[dbonds]

9. Bullshit, playing it smart would be pushing through single payer

It is crap to think the HCR was a pawn in a bigger game, HCR was a Queen in the game.

[Armstead]

15. Playing it smart would have been pushing through optional public insurance/medicare buy in

But we blow the chance to play it smart abou0t six months ago. Now it's more a mamtter of salvaging something from the wreckage.

[Clio the Leo]

12. Or because they're planning to kill the filibuster so it wont matter...

.... if there are FIVE Scott Browns in the Senate.

[Armstead]

18. Another possibility /nt

[QC]

13. Chess is not really Obama's game.

[Armstead]

17. LOL /nt

[Milo_Bloom]

14. I think we can officially dispense with the "playing chess" concept.

[Armstead]

16. Well...let me put it another way -- I'm just playing speculative chess here

[Milo_Bloom]

20. I am talking about the entire concept of Obama being one step ahead.

I think if the results from last night taught us anything else, it should be that Obama doesn't have a master plan he is in the process of executing.

He is just another politician desperately trying to hold onto power.

[wowimthere]

19. GOP don't think like this... they play smash mouth politics