This has become more than doing what he thinks is right for the country. Getting health insurance reform passed is now a personal thing with him. If he fails at this, he becomes a lame duck to many on the left. He still has lofty desires for his first term, including immigration reform, and cap and tax. Those will be difficult if not impossible to ram through if insurance reform fails.
Absolutely.
Elitist is the only word I can think of and I'm (despite what lurkers may think) be charitable if for no other reason than misdiagnosing one's enemy is almost always fatal to yourself. I don't see Obama as nefarious but I do think he is well aware of the fact that his policies will hurt America but he feels that hurt is deserved because of past girievances real or imagined. Kind of like a step-brother who resents having to be married into a group of people he holds in disdain which makes him seek to chasten them at every opportunity.
Now he finds himself at the do-or-die moment and what is worse he reached it in record time. Desperation doesn't even begin to describe it. It will be a real test of his "character" to see how he reacts. My fear is that since he has bought into all the worst fantasies of abuses of power to rationalize why we deserve to be chastened he may justify some extremely shady/scary tactics emerge. With Van Jones and the rest surrounding him and totally unaccountable this could get real ugly real fast. Conservatives don't rile easily but once they are moved they move hard and heavy.
That is why OBAMA has to dial this back. He needs to prove in tangible and highly visible terms that he would rather lose the legislative agenda than canvince 50-plus percent of the population that he seeks his agenda over their freedom and protests.
But then he loses his base.
We live in Confuscius' interesting times.
