It sometimes takes a little while for the glaringly obvious to filter through the perma-fog of the Beltway, but it's finally happened. You need look no further than Dan Balz in today's WaPo:
The cause of bipartisanship moved into reverse during August, though not because of anything Obama did or didn't do. In this case, two Republicans who the administration had hoped could be leaders in helping to work out a bipartisan bill unexpectedly turned harshly partisan in their rhetoric.
Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, the ranking Republican on the Finance Committee, increasingly sounded more like a politician worried about straying from his conservative base than a secure congressional leader eager to solve one of the nation's biggest and most persistent problems -- the cost and availability of health care.
Sen. Mike Enzi of Wyoming, another member of the Finance Committee's Gang of Six, gave the Republican radio address on Saturday and sounded like someone spooked by the angriest of the town hall meetings. Rather than seeking consensus, he seemed intent on drawing lines in the sand.
Of course, the cause of bipartisanship has been doomed from the get-go, with Grassley and Enzi never intending to participate in good faith--their own statements of the past several months have made that pretty clear. But at least someone inside the Village has taken notice.
That was probably helped to a large degree by Chuck Schumer, saying it out loud on the Ed Show on Monday.
"The idea of having Grassley and Enzi negotiate in good faith is pretty much gone," quoth Schumer, adding that a bipartisan solution is not "likely to happen now."
Schumer’s reference to Robert Gibbs was to his crack at the press briefing yesterday about Enzi . But Schumer went farther than Gibbs, effectively endorsing the idea that bipartisanship should start its own end of life consultations, because it’s a goner.
Encouragingly, the idea has even trickled up to the White House.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, senior adviser David Axelrod said the two senators appeared to be "satisfied with the status quo":
"If you’re sitting at a table negotiating in good faith, then you probably don’t send out mailers saying, ‘Help me stop Obama-care.’ That’s just common sense," Mr. Axelrod said. The two senators’ actions, he said, "suggested they don’t want to participate" in bipartisan talks. "They’re satisfied with the status quo. We are not," Mr. Axelrod said.
It have been nice had they come to that realization well enough before the blown July deadline. It might have saved us all from the August that the opposition engineered so well.
So the Baucus debacle now seems dead, reconciliation for healthcare reform more likely than ever, and the Dems' slipping poll numbers arguing for bolder, conclusive action--for change we can believe in. All this leads to an interesting situation for Obama and Congress, as Greg point out:
Interestingly, this has created a built-in tension: While Senate Dems have more control over whether health care succeeds, the stakes are higher for House Dems. It’s a tougher cycle for the House, aides say, meaning they’d likely face bigger losses if Senate Dems can’t resolve their impasse with Republicans or if they don’t opt for reconciliation to get reform done.
Either way, if they look hard enough, liberals can locate something of a silver lining in all the bad news: It ups the pressure on Congressional Dems not just to do health care this year, but do it right.
Everything points to the need to "do it right." Let's hope that realization filters up to the White House, too, before Obama negotiates himself out of good options.