White House Trumpets Multiple GOP Ideas In Health Care Bill

Isn't more accurate to say that everytime Democrats bring up HCR their leadership proposes centrist one, only to see it get defeated everytime when the GOP shifts rightward again?

...and consider this: HCR reform efforts went from partial success, (Medicare and Medicaid) to near success, (Close call with Nixon) to can't get out of committee, (Clinton) so the next attempt naturally won't get out of the sarting gate. It's silly logic.

That and it's not really true. You can't compare Clinton's initial proposals to the almost end-of-the-line compromise worked out between Nixon and Kennedy. Nixon's started out to the right of Clinton's and Obama's initial proposals and moved to the left to compromise with the opposition. There's no pattern to this, just different cases and actors.

Can you read at all? Which word in TED WORKED WITH THE NIXON ADMINISTRATION is beyond your feeble comprehension? Not a word that Vickie wrote is at any variance at all with the account I linked to.

What Kennedy regretted was the fate his compromise proposal met with due to forces beyond his control, not his (nonexistent) failure to compromise. Stop besmirching his memory for your pitiful trolling purposes.

In a hypothetical situation, I would agree. But this "jobs bill" stuff is even trickier than most. Blue Dogs need a sort of double cover here. The senators in question don't want to vote for a bill perceived as too far to the left. But they also can't afford to be seen voting against a jobs bill. Blue Dogs have an especially difficult situation in that they have to please Democratic voters and non-Democratic voters who might be willing to vote for them in something closer to equal measure than a senator with a more substantial party base available to offset the losses resulting from a less robust appeal to the non-base. Sometimes this double cover even involves a prerequisite of some token Republican votes to discourage or take the bite out of whatever ads their eventual opponents might run. In extreme cases, they literally need every single vote they can possibly get. They don't have the luxury of strategically sacrificing a smaller number of votes for a larger number. So they have to walk that gossamer thread. Others only have to walk a tightrope, while still others have a beam. And then there are those lucky few who, for reasons of demographics or circumstances or both, more or less have a full-on suspension bridge in front of them. And the party wants all of these senators to get re-elected. One in the hand is almost always better when it comes to electoral calculations.

This all assumes these people are 100 percent political animals, less motivated by ideology than political survival. My observation has been that usually, for better or worse, that is pretty much the case, especially with Blue Dogs.

Anyway, I'm describing these concerns not because they're insightful but because I think they probably should apply when looking at this particular situation. These factors are why I think the leadership needs, especially on a difficult issue like this one, to give these problem senators the vote they need and not just the vote the leadership wants for the legislative situation at hand.