Finally, there is health care. Every cliché Ann Coulter throws at the Democrats is gloriously fulfilled by the Democratic health care bills. – David Brooks
When leading Republicans start proudly pointing to Ann Coulter’s comedy, you know things are out of whack.
Yesterday, I bluntly advised Pres. Obama: “Putting it bluntly, if the Obama administration had embraced the progressive new media coalition (Health Care Now, SEIU, Firedoglake, OpenLeft, Digby and others) driving the universal health care debate from the start, he wouldn’t be in this mess right now.”
Well, the light finally dawned.
Yesterday, Obama put into action something he should have done from the start, but didn’t because he seemed to calculate he didn’t need the help. He reached out to new media. Things have shifted dramatically making serious outreach not only important, but desperately so. Sam Stein has a round up of the health care call, including audio.
“It is important just to keep the pressure on members of Congress because what happens is there is a default position of inertia here in Washington,” the president said during an invitation-only conference call. “And pushing against that, making sure that people feel that the desperation that ordinary families are feeling all across the country, every single day, when they are worrying about whether they can pay their premiums or not… People have to feel that in a visceral way. And you guys can help deliver that better than just about anybody.” … “I know the blogs are best at debunking myths that can slip through a lot of the traditional media outlets,” he said. “And that is why you are going to play such an important role in our success in the weeks to come.”
Engaging new media at this late juncture doesn’t change the fact that the push Obama asked for on Congress is not only a late request, but something most of the people on the call were already doing. The missing link had been the President himself. Obama was working the bipartisan lines, evidently oblivious to the fracturing in his own coalition, or that pals of his like Joe Lieberman were ignoring the importance of reform.
Now, everything is set up for Obama’s address tomorrow.
But beyond CBS, the White House failed to wrangle primetime media coverage they wanted, having to drop the time to 8:00 p.m. eastern to get everyone on board.
CBS, which airs only repeats that evening, agreed early Monday to cover the conference.
But for NBC, Fox and ABC, the decision was tougher. During a summer that’s otherwise strewn with repeats, Wednesday includes all of their top-rated reality programs.
Fox declined outright to air the news conference. NBC and ABC fell into line late Monday after the White House shifted the event’s time from the previously announced 9 p.m. to the lesser-watched hour of 8 p.m.
Engaged and owning health care reform, Pres. Obama obviously sensed the dangers to his young presidency and what would happen if he doesn’t get health care reform, a fight he clearly underestimated from the start.
Obama’s also seen Republicans jump at the cracks forming among Dems. Because simply put, Republicans can’t afford to let Obama win without a fight, because it would be another failure in the long line of ineptitude where the public safety net is concerned. A moral imperative Republicans just don’t understand.
However, as Ezra Klein points out, Obama’s “trust us” comes with big risks.
… After that quote, it seems almost redundant to say that this is the clearest indication we’ve gotten that the White House sees conference committee as the focal point for its efforts. But that’s the message. The audience for this call — which I was not originally invited to, but was able to listen in on — was mainly progressive bloggers, and so the underlying argument was that liberals should have some faith that a disappointing draft out of the Senate Finance Committee is not the end of the process, and they should not lose heart.
But it’s also a risky strategy: The plea for progressives to avoid making “the best the enemy of the good,” and instead remember that flaws can be fixed in conference committee, is, on some level, the White House saying, “Trust us.” Conference committee, after all, is a closed-door negotiation that is hard to influence. What emerges will be very hard, if not impossible, to change. If the White House does not hew to the same bottom lines as the progressive bloggers, or is not able to persuade the congressional negotiators to honor its preferences, the product could diverge quite sharply from what some liberals are hoping for.
As Ezra also notes, giving Pres. Obama credit for getting further than anyone who came before him is important. However, that label, while laudable, won’t help the uninsured or the millions of other Americans who are scared to death that they’re one medical examination away from the brink.
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