Fearing Senate Loss in Mass, Dems Threaten to Impose Senate Bill on the House and the Nation

By FireDogLake's fflambeau FDL

Planning for a loss in the Massachusetts Senatorial race, the Obama administration intends to impose the Senate version of health care on the House with no changes being allowed. Isn’t that pretty much what Obama has wanted all along?

From Charles Babbington of the AP:

A panicky White House and Democratic allies scrambled Sunday for a plan to salvage their hard-fought health care package in case a Republican wins Tuesday’s Senate race in Massachusetts, which would enable the GOP to block further Senate action.

The likeliest scenario would require persuading House Democrats to accept a bill the Senate passed last month, despite their objections to several parts.

The Senate version, after all, squares more closely with what Obama really wants than the more liberal House version. The Senate version, for instance, covers fewer people (94% of Americans vs. 96%) and the Senate version includes the tax on "Cadillac health plans" that Obama really pushed all along. This path would also allow Obama to push through the far less progressive Senate version WITHOUT ANY CHANGES WHATSOEVER made by the members of the House:

The newly discussed fallback would require House Democrats to swallow hard and approve the Senate-passed bill without changes. President Barack Obama could sign it into law without another Senate vote needed.

"The simplest way is the House route," a White House aide said Sunday, speaking on condition of anonymity because Democrats have not conceded the race to Brown.

Is there any question that the House of Representatives is really dead, killed off by our supposed democratic party and by its leader, Barack Obama who would rather deal with just the House of Lords?

Repulsive DLCer Lanny Davis, meanwhile, makes it apparent that the Rahm Obama faction of the Democratic party is really putting a gun to the head of all Democrats. Vote for Coakley or you get this:

If Democrats lose in Massachusetts, it will simply mean Democrats and President Obama need find a new center to enact health care and other progressive legislation – meaning, they must sit down with Lindsey Graham, Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, Orrin Hatch, John McCain and other GOP Senators with long records of bipartisan legislating — and moderate Democrats Ben Nelson, Blanche Lincoln, Evan Bayh, Mark Pryor, Mary Landrieu and others –and create a new health care bill that can command broad bipartisan support.

That’s right, the DLCers still believe they can deal with Olympia Snowe and Orrin Hatch, even John McCain, and indeed maybe they can because their mindsets are closer to those GOP’ers than they are to democrats from the democratic side of the Democratic Party.

Meanwhile, spinmeisters from the White House keep blaming Coakley for "running a bad campaign" while the fault really lies with Obama and all of his broken promises. Get this, she was criticized recently for not having campaigned (or run campaign ads) in the five days surrounding Christmas Day! I mean, who would have watched them? Who would have attended a rally on Christmas? Today, a New York Times article written from the perspective of seeing Obama as Superman coming to her rescue, talks of Coakley’s "flailing candidacy". The article makes little or no mention of the underlying reasons why any Democrat running today would have trouble: high unemployment, government bailouts of banks and Wall St., and a health "insurance" bill designed with mandates to bailout insurance companies.

Robert Kuttner, a progressive who has pretty much given Obama a pass until now, seems to be waking up to Obama’s faults now. In a hard hitting article over at Huffington Post he says:

As a resident of Massachusetts, in the last two days I’ve gotten robo calls from Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Bill Clinton, Martha Coakley, and Angela Menino, the wife of Boston’s mayor — everyone but the sainted Ted Kennedy. In Obama’s call, he advised me that he needed Martha Coakley in the Senate, "because I’m fighting to curb the abuses of a health insurance industry that routinely denies care." Let’s see, would that be the same insurance industry that Rahm was cutting inside deals with all spring and summer? The same insurance industry that spent tens of millions on TV spots backing Obama’s bill as sensible reform? If voters are wondering which side this guy is on, he has given them good reason.

Either way, the Massachusetts surprise should be a wake-up call of the most fundamental kind. Obama needs to stop playing inside games with bankers and insurance lobbyists, and start being a fighter for regular Americans. Otherwise, he can kiss it all goodbye.

R.I.P.: The United States House of Representatives, born on April 1, 1789, deceased 2010.

R.I.P. The Democratic Party born a long time ago, died under Rahm Obama in 2009-2010.