See Who Bleeds in the Bare Knuckle Brawl Over Health Care Reform

This is the week where we see who has power in Washington, D.C.  With the Obama administration and House Democratic leadership going for the all or nothing health care vote, I would love to be in on the conversations with wavering House Democrats – the threats, the pleading, the bribes (of one sort or another).  Politics in the capital is always bare-knuckle but rarely do we get to see it so out front, rarely are the winners and losers so apparent.

If the subject wasn’t so important, it would be a joy to watch.  Hell, it is a joy to watch.  I can’t wait for the TV movie …

As for the actual topic – health care reform – I live in a country with socialized medicine, more or less, and I love it.  For more from me, see here and here.

But on to the games, Time has a good take on what is at stake for Obama – just his entire Presidency.  I worked as an intern in Washington during Clinton’s first summer in office.  As he got his haircut on a jet, with the engines roaring, you could already just feel the whole thing – health care included – going down the drain.  I wonder what the buzz among interns is now?

The Republicans are actually not in much power now, or have maxed it out.  They stick together, like good little conservatives do, and that is that.  No, the anti-reform money is squarely aimed at wavering Democrats (the top vote counter in the House says he does not have the votes, though administration officials crowed that the bill would be law next week, even as they gave up on trying to eliminate special sweetheart deals to win over senators), and White House Senior Adviser David Axelrod says that health care industry lobbyists have swarmed D.C. like “locusts” who are trying to “muscle” people into voting their way.

The New York Times has cataloged all the money spent on both sides to sway on the fence Democrats.

Not only are these swing Democrats being pummeled in the new spate of advertising — which could total $30 million before week’s end — but extensive efforts are under way in Congressional districts, where groups on both sides of the issue are using tactics similar to get-out-the-vote drives to urge constituents to contact their lawmakers. Mr. Obama is calling lawmakers, too, and on Monday is traveling to Ohio to open a weeklong campaign to close this act of the health care debate.

And who are these Democrats who hold the fate of so much in their hands?  Turns out they are all over the map – on the left, on the right, obsessed with abortion, with immigration – USA Today profiles a couple while the Wall Street Journal also takes on the subject.  So you can’t just twist the same arms the same way.  You have to give this guy a political noogie while that one needs to be pantsed …

Of course, who really has the power as the 2010 midterm elections come racing towards us?  The people.  If there was any sort of consensus, there would be no openings for this political silliness.  But the people are not speaking with one voice, even as Obama heads to Ohio to drum up support in what seems like a rather pointless exercise.  No, the people are speaking in more like 58 voices, and not as negatively as you think, or negatively in the way you might think as moderate Democrats run from Obama on the campaign trail.  The Baltimore Sun parses the opinion polls and comes up with some interesting conclusions.

Rather than thinking of the public as divided along party lines, it is better to think of it as being like Goldilocks and the porridge. Twenty-five percent say the health care plan goes too far, 17 percent say it does not go far enough (some are still disappointed over the removal of the public option), while 41 percent say it is about right. Rather than being on one side of the spectrum, it appears that the proposed health care plan occupies the middle ground of the electorate.

As a father on paternity leave who spends much of my day singing nursery rhymes and reading toddler books, I appreciate any fairy tale reference in my news.

Makes it easier to understand.