Monday end-of summer punditry!
Ross Douthat: Don't blame Obama for health care difficulties.Blame Democrats.
If the Congressional Democrats can’t get a health care package through, it won’t prove that President Obama is a sellout or an incompetent. It will prove that Congress’s liberal leaders are lousy tacticians, and that its centrist deal-makers are deal-makers first, poll watchers second and loyal Democrats a distant third. And it will prove that the Democratic Party is institutionally incapable of delivering on its most significant promises.
Paul Krugman: The problem in Washington was, and is, Reagan.
Reaganomics has failed to deliver what it promised, yet people still believe that government intervention is bad, and leaving the private sector to its own devices is good.
Thomas E. Mann: it's too early to blame anyone just yet.
I agree that Obama has been pushed back on his heels but I am skeptical a different strategy would have prevented it. I also think there is a reasonable possibility of banking a significant health reform bill by year’s end. With everything else that has been accomplished, that would make for a very successful first year. Way too early for obituaries.
EJ Dionne:
The hardest slogan to sell in politics is: "Things could have been a whole lot worse." No wonder President Obama is having trouble defending his stimulus plan.
More Paul Krugman:
And anyway, who were these reflexively anti-Bushists? Howard Dean? Read what he actually said at the time, and it looks totally sensible (and prescient). Me? I think my columns from that period look pretty sound in the light of hindsight. Bloggers like Atrios or Kos? Again, if you read their archives what’s striking is how sane they come off compared with the "serious" voices of the time.
Steven Andrew:
James Sherley has long objected to embryonic stem cell research on ethical grounds and rose to quasi-martyr status on the extreme right when he went on a short lived hunger strike to protest lack of tenure at MIT. Theresa Deisher is sort of the Michele Bachmann of regenerative medicine who believes, for example, that autism is cause by aborted fetal DNA in vaccines. The suit is supported by several religious organizations, including one that champions surrogate mothers and adoptive parents for unused blastocysts produced by fertility clinics. Legal experts predict the suit won't get far. Those convinced a single cell smaller than the period at the end of this sentence is imbued with personhood don’t care.
Mark Fiore on health reform (h/t tfls):