NEWS

Obama Weighs Paring Goals for Health Bill - New York Times

President Obama signaled on Wednesday that he might be willing to scale back his proposed health care overhaul to a version that could attract bipartisan support, as the White House and Congressional Democrats grappled with a political landscape transformed by the Republican victory in the Massachusetts Senate race.

House Democrats reluctant to take up Senate health-care reform bill - Washington Post

Determined to enact a health-care reform bill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi struggled Wednesday to sell the Senate version of the legislation to reluctant Democrats, even as party moderates raised doubts about forging ahead without bipartisan support.

Conrad opens door to reconciliation for healthcare - The Hill

The Senate Budget Committee Chairman said Wednesday he’s willing to use special rules to force changes to the healthcare legislation through the Senate with a simple majority vote.

Brown's victory in Mass. senate race hardly a repudiation of health reform - Washington Post

While many are describing the election to fill the late Edward M. Kennedy's Senate seat as a referendum on national health-care reform, the Republican candidate rode to victory on a message more nuanced than flat-out resistance to universal health coverage: Massachusetts residents, he said, already had insurance and should not have to pay for it elsewhere.

House Liberals To Pelosi: “We Cannot Support The Senate Bill. Period.” - Greg Sargent

In a private meeting in the Capitol just now, a dozen or more House liberals bluntly told  Nancy Pelosi that there was no chance that they would vote to pass the Senate bill in its current form — making it all but certain that House Dems won’t opt for this approach, a top House liberal tells me.

OPINION

The Massachusetts Election - New York Times

Mr. Obama was right to press for health care reform. But he spent too much time talking to reluctant Democrats and Republicans who never had the slightest intention of supporting him. He sat on the sidelines while the Republicans bombarded Americans with false but effective talk of death panels and a government takeover of their doctors’ offices. And he did not make the case strongly enough that the health care system and the economy are deeply interconnected or explain why Americans should care about this huge issue in the midst of a recession: If they lose their jobs, they lose their health insurance.

The problem with paring back - Ezra Klein

Let's say you want to buy a house from me. And at the last minute, your portfolio take a big hit and you realize you have less money than you think. "Pare it back," you say. What do I do?

A Path Forward: It's Time to Pass Health Insurance Reform - Andy Stern

The question on everyone's mind today is what went wrong in Massachusetts? The tea leaf-reading and hand wringing will no doubt monopolize much of Washington's time over the coming days and weeks. But there's a better question for today: What's the path forward to passing meaningful health insurance reform?

Where's the Obama I Voted For? - Jon Cohn

If you’ve been a Democrat for more than two or three years, disappointment with your leaders is something that comes rather naturally. From the 1970s until well into the previous decade, the party produced presidents and presidential candidates like Jimmy Carter, Michael Dukakis, and John Kerry. These men weren’t lovable losers. They were just losers. Even the lone winner among them–Bill Clinton–famously and infamously found ways to disappoint.

A Question of Character - Mike Lux

In all the hundreds of thousands of words being written and spoken about the implications of last night's special election in Massachusetts by all the pundits and strategists and drum-beaters for various interest groups, only one thing really matters right now: the character of the leaders of the Democratic party. It is up to them whether this generation of Democrats has the guts to keep moving forward boldly even as they run into resistance and trial, or whether they fall back into the collective character flaw that has held the Democrats, and the country, back for 40 years now: that sense of abiding caution that would have them pull back into a shell at the first sign of trouble and give up on trying to change anything. As I wrote in my book The Progressive Revolution.

Obama Finally Gets His Victory For Bipartisanship - Drew Westin

You can blame a bad candidate, bad organization, bad timing of a vacation — choose your rationalization. But the reality is that voters in Massachusetts were reacting to the same foul mist coming off Boston Harbor that New Jersey Voters smelled coming off the Hudson and Virginia voters off the Chesapeake.

Coakley's Loss: Pie in the President's Face - The Nation

Barack Obama went to Boston to rally voters and got a pie in the face. He lost his innocence as the valiant young president and also lost his sixty-vote majority in the Senate. Now we will find out what the man is made of–either a true political leader or just another show horse. Dozens of explanations are being offered for why the Dems were humiliated in Massachusetts. Democrats incline to grab easy answers. The president, if he is tough enough, will instead face the hard message of this political fiasco.