Today, HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius met with the heads of the different private health insurance companies. The bigwigs had a message for the Obama Administration: Stop blaming the insurance companies for the high cost of health care. Ironically, in making their case, they delivered a powerful argument that a private health insurance system like ours [...]

Blanche Lincoln’s new Arkansas primary ad is, as BT says, so politically tone deaf it’s hard to imagine anyone thought it was a good idea.  In it, she tries to distance herself from all the partisan bickering in DC, and says “I voted against giving more money to Wall Street.” But Blanche Lincoln voted for [...]

Senate Democrats like Kent Conrad (D-ND) and Tom Harkin (D-IA) are strongly pushing the meme that Senate rules require House Democrats to first pass the Senate health care bill unchanged, then a reconciliation measure of “fixes,” and only then can Senate Democrats do anything.That clearly does not sit well with House Democrats, who are growing [...]

During Wednesday’s health care address, President Obama said that the American people deserve a final up-or-down vote on health care reform: So, no matter which approach you favor, I believe the United States Congress owes the American people a final vote on health care reform. We have debated this issue thoroughly, not just for the [...]

As I told Rick Klein and David Chalian on TopLine yesterday, if you don’t think the endangered Freshmen and Sophomores in the House are driving the car right now, think again. Remember that magic number of 39 Democratic votes needed to join with the Republican for a majority? Well, that’s how many Freshmen and Sophomores were willing to ban together in the “oust Rangel” effort — rather than have the issue hung around their necks as a millstone in 2010:

Joe Crowley, an ally of Rangel who has also played a leadership role at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, is leading the whip count efforts on Rangel, acting as a go-between between the vulnerable freshman and sophomore Democrats, on the one hand, and Rangel and Democratic leadership on the other.

They were willing to buck leadership to oust the Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee to keep their seats.

Think about that.

For reasons I can’t quite fathom, President Obama has spent a huge amount of time and effort during the health care debate trying to integrate Republican ideas into the health care reform bill while constantly ignoring members of his own party. While this would make sense if Obama knew he would get Republican votes by [...]

Politico is reporting that Tom Harkin (D-IA) said Senate Democrats have decided to use reconciliation to finish health care reform, but there is a big caveat for House Democrats. Sen. Tom Harkin told POLITICO that Senate Democratic leaders have decided to go the reconciliation route. The House, he said, will first pass the Senate bill [...]

Today, during his remarks on the way forward for health care reform, President Obama indirectly but strongly called for using reconciliation. From his speech: Reform has already passed the House with a majority. It has already passed the Senate with a supermajority of sixty votes. And now it deserves the same kind of up-or-down vote [...]

When Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), Ben Nelson (D-NE), Mary Landrieu (D-LA), Joe Lieberman (I-CT), and the entire Republican Senate caucus stepped up to kill the public option in the Senate, it is important to remember that the health insurance industry won a victory—a victory worth $300 billion. As Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) and Tom Harkin (D-IA) now [...]

Blanche Lincoln is not in the “center” of anything but K Street, and most of her money will have to be spent making people forget where it came from.

Obama, Rahm and the DSCC will do everything they can to make sure Lincoln stays in office. It’s going to be an ugly 2 months until the primary, but because liberal interest groups stormed out of the veal pen and marshaled their resources, at least Halter has a fighting chance.

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