About two weeks ago I wrote a post in anticipation of the February 25th Health Care Summit in the context of President Obama’s political style – the “Long Game”. His style was described as that of a chess player always thinking farther ahead than his political opponents, drawing them in “treat them as if they were operating in good faith, and draw them into a conversation about how they actually would solve the problem. If they have nothing, it shows”, as Mark Schmitt articulated it.
In my post I described how Democrats in Washington were going to try to use the Summit to push Health Care Reform the extra few inches it needs to get passed. Thus, the audience for the Summit was not the public as much as it was the Congressional Democrats who needed to be persuaded to fight for this legislation, and who needed to be persuaded that Republicans had no real ideas that would turn into votes.
The hope is that this summit will give Democrats enough political breathing room (read: spine) to force the House of Representatives to pass the Senate version of HCR and the Senate to fix some problems with their bill through reconciliation. If that happens, Obama will have his victory. As Sullivan would say, “meep, meep“.
(Whoa, I just quoted myself. A blog first. How meta!)