What Obama was up against was demonstrated in the early months of his presidency when the mainstream media interpreted Republican obstructionism not as a cynical political strategy by the GOP but as "Obama's failure" to live up to his campaign promise about overcoming Washington's partisanship.
To deflect that criticism, Obama went the extra mile for bipartisanship. For instance, he allowed the Senate Finance Committee's health-care talks (involving three Democrats and three Republicans, including Snowe) to extend beyond his August deadline. That gave the GOP more time to disseminate anti-reform propaganda and rally the angry right-wing "base" to disrupt "town hall meetings" and intimidate members of Congress.
Obama's assiduous courting of Snowe and other Republican "moderates" also ran him headlong into another double-whammy. In the Senate, he ended up making major concessions demanded by Republicans and conservative Democrats (like dropping the public option), but he gained not a single GOP vote while simultaneously infuriating and demoralizing the Democratic "base."
By late fall 2009, Obama had transformed the health-care debate into the political equivalent of Napoleon's retreat from Moscow, as a once powerful army dragged itself through the Russian winter, abandoning equipment and valuables along the way, hoping just to survive.
While Obama could have made other choices, such as demanding Senate leaders apply the majority rule of "reconciliation" for at least parts of the health-care package, the overriding reason for the current state of the health-care bill was the solid wall of GOP obstructionism. The Republicans made a calculation that Obama's failure would mean their success.
Now, as progressives in Massachusetts look toward next week's special election and as voters around the country contemplate next November's congressional balloting they must weigh this possibility: if they punish Obama and the Democrats for their tactical shortcomings, they will be rewarding the Republicans for their obstructionist strategy.
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