| Mr Khan said: Bingo. He screwed up by even trying bipartisan leadership after the Republicans clearly indicated that they wanted nothing more than to be wreckers, to avert legislative agendas and then blame the Democrats for Republican intransigience Should've tightened the leash in the Democratic party too, really. Then we'd have a real health care bill to resemble a real country's health care system, not this middle-of-the-road crap |
Obama knew very well how fierce partisanship is in D.C., and despite his campaign trail promises to change the tone, poisoned the well immediately after taking office when he said, "Shut up. I won." He had no intention of working with Republicans, and the idea that he wasted all kinds of time trying to reach out to them is just fiction. Trying to get Olympia Snowe to vote for your agenda =/= bipartisanship.
To your second point: what would you have done exactly? Many moderates and Blue Dogs simply weren't going for it. It's no mystery why, especially now that everyone can see plain as day just how false were all the platitudes their leadership tried to feed them about how people would learn to love the bill and they'd be rewarded in the midterms. The Dems had to pull every trick in the book to just barely push any kind of bill through, and when they couldn't revist the bill in the Senate after Scott Brown's election, the whole enterprise was thought to be dead. You're simply not dealing with the political reality with which Obama was faced, and thus are not giving him enough credit.
