Obama has lost his way on healthcare

[CHIMO]

President Obama may be on the edge of threading the finest of needles and accomplishing the next-to-impossible: uniting the "tea party" right and the progressive left against him in the debate over US healthcare reform.

Hippocrates famously admonished physicians "to do no harm," and if history is any guide, Obama could very likely have his way with progressive legislators on the issue so long as he stays true to that mantra including the abandonment of the "public option" in a final bill.

Here's the thing. Old canards like "bleeding heart" have not been applied to liberals arbitrarily. There is a genuine, deeply felt concern for the non-privileged among many on the left, and an unwillingness to write off vulnerable citizens who may benefit from the bill's less-controversial reforms as acceptable losses in a war for policy purity. It's why, despite the bluster and chest-thumping, the moment the Obama administration started sending its signals that it would likely abandon the public option through the agency of Senator Max Baucus, Chair of the Senate Finance Committee and convener of the now-crumbling, bipartisan "gang of six" which was putting together its own reform proposals, the liberal jig was up. As I wrote previously, the perfect-as-enemy-of-the-good argument will always resonate with enough progressives to break any leftist obstructionist bloc.

Which means it may well be up to the US Congress – likely in the person of Speaker Pelosi (as Senate Majority Leader Reid seems as confounded as the administration) – to save the Obama administration (and by extension the Democratic party) from itself. A challenge she will find uniquely bedevilling to rise to.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/sep/07/healthcare-barack-obama