re: #125 garhighway

I agree that Obama has been tactically clumsy regarding HCR, but I disagree that pushing for it was a mistake. He ran on it, it was a key campaign promise, and he followed through.

If you think back to the 2008 campaign, Obama’s main planks were HCR, getting out of Iraq, and getting serious about Afghanistan. Much of what he has pushed for since have been improvised responses to changed conditions: the stimulus, the auto bailout, etc…

I agree with all of this, except that I don’t think Obama was particularly clumsy, he was just facing 100% opposition from a very rich industry (and, by implication, the Republican party and quite a few “centrist” Democrats).