From Tom at 538.com:
Look, liberals should be rightly upset with the Obama Administration for failing to recognize that battles to effect major, non-incremental policy change require (1) a lot of political capital in the first place; (2) and the exertion of unusual presidential influence on other Washington elites; (3) and a sophisticated and coordinated message campaign; (4) and probably a bit of luck.
Obama--who, incidentally, is not only a former community organizer fully conversant in the history of social movements and the resistance to them, but a former constitutional law professor and student of presidential politics--needed to recognize from the jump that a supermajority-worthy personal and public campaign had to be waged on behalf of healthcare reform. A few heads should have rolled, a few prisoners taken. Rather than worrying as she was today about disgusting and devious wiretappers, Sen. Mary Landrieu--no Senate titan she--should have spent the past few months worried about the Wrath of Obama. Joe Lieberman, ditto.
Meanwhile, there should have been a rollout explaining that reform was not only good for corporate employers and thus American productivity, but also for worker and workplace performance and, thus again, American productivity. He should framed reform in those terms--rather than as a series of vignettes, true and as sad as they may be, about people with dropped coverage or bankrupting bills--and then publicly dared Republicans and their tea-partying conservative allies to vote against a bill that would make the American economy and the workers who fuel it more effective, more efficient, more productive and more competitive because we would no longer lose time and money and paperwork and missed work days to a cobbled-together health care system constructed more or less around the time The Edsel rolled out.
Joe and I have raised pretty much every single point, repeatedly, including the need for a concerted campaign and linking health care reform to American productivity. Neither ever happened, from the White House or the Hill, and the kind of kick in the balls campaign we needed never really came forth from the groups either.
