Wednesday, January 20, 2010

What's Wrong With This Picture?

From the NYT:

With Democrats reeling from the Republican victory in the Massachusetts special Senate election, President Obama on Wednesday signaled that he might be willing to set aside his goal of achieving near-universal health coverage for all Americans in favor of a stripped-down measure with bipartisan support.

Later in the story, the obvious problem with that idea is mentioned...

Republicans showed no new signs of willingness to work with the Democrats. Asked what he would be willing to work on with majority, the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, offered meek praise for Mr. Obama’s strategy in Afghanistan but did not offer a single example on domestic policy.

So, we will try the same thing again, and expect different results...

(Senator) Pryor said Democrats should reach across the aisle. “We are a lot better off when we work in a bipartisan way,” Mr. Pryor said. “Republicans have a lot of good ideas.” But when he and other Democrats tried to work with Republicans last year, Mr. Pryor said, “we were flatly rejected.”

Even though we know it won't work...

"You cannot dance with someone if they are not willing to dance with you," said Sen. Robert Menendez, D-NJ. He called GOP complaints that the Democrats wrote a partisan bill "pretty lame, when they have made a political calculation that their path to victory is to have the president fail."

The Democrat that figures out the answer to this problem, wins.