“Leaving private insurance companies the job of controlling the costs of healthcare is like making a pyromaniac the fire chief.” So says New York House Representative Anthony Weiner (D) on his website. And then he convinced Joe Scarborough of the need for a public option in health care reform. Can someone in the White House please give Weiner a call? It sounds like the PR-department could really use him.

The following is so chock full of irony that it would’ve made Fellini blush. At this moment in time, when Democratic president Barack Obama is embroiled in a fight about US health care reform and memories of the botched attempt by the Clintons in 1993 hang over him like a dark shadow, Obama’s vacation spot is to be hit by…hurricane Bill.

Seriously, you can’t make this up.

|Six months after being swept into office on the crest of a popular wave of change, Barack Obama seems to have hit his first snag. Polls are showing that more Americans have doubts about his health care reform plans now than they did several months ago. Obama is not entirely to blame for that – select committees in the House of Representatives hammered out no fewer than three different proposals -  but it is up to Obama to keep the voters aboard. Especially in the so-called Blue Dog states.

|Obama is juggling several policy balls at once, and it must be driving his communications department mad. Either way, they don’t seem to be doing a very good job of getting more people aboard their bandwagon. On the contrary, doubts are seeping in.

There is a worrying trendline in recent polls, as can be seen in this collection of recent polls, gathered by the good folks at Pollster.com:

The bold digits in the column on the right shows that fewer people seem to support current plans for health care reform. Before we go on, rest assured: a majority of the US public still wants health care reform. But the aggregate above and other polls of the past month seem to reflect growing unease among questioned voters.

There’s too much confusion
So, if they support health care reform, then what is going on? One problem: confusion. Several committees in the House of Representatives drew up differing proposals. There are several grand schemes out there at the moment, and they seem to be somewhat dazzling ordinary news media consumers. That’s not their fault; the plans are confusing, and that’s not surprising when the draft proposals themselves are 1200 pages in size – each. Even seasoned journalists are having a hard time keeping tabs on what’s what.

Another problem seems to be Obama’s political saviness. Instead of using a top-down approach, like Bill and Hillary Clinton did in 1993-’94 and thus imposing his plan on Congress, Obama has decided to use a bottom-up approach: he’s allowing his Democratic friends and foes in Congress to clash over several proposals at once. The idea is that the Democrats will agree on a compromise, which Obama can then carbon-copy. That way, when push comes to shove at the end of this year, Congress will back the reform plan all the way. Why is this a problem? Because it allows for the confusion mentioned earlier – and thus an opening for the enemies of health care reform to try to change the narrative.

But the thing is: the Republicans aren’t really being listened to by the mainstream voters, and the health insurance lobby hasn’t even started fighting the plans yet – the lobby is waiting to see what the final plan will be. Instead, the voters’ doubts are being fed by crummy communications coming from the Democrats and the White House.

Because even though, as said, the Republicans are hardly being taken seriously by most voters, the Republicans are succeeding in one thing: pinning everything ‘bad’ about health care on the White House. Everytime the Blue Dog Democrats raise an objection to a reform proposal, Republicans seize on it by wrapping it around a brick and throwing it at the White House. That way, they’re trying to paint Obama as indecisive, and his policies confusing.

But voters don’t need Republicans to remind them of the complexity of the reform proposals. So far, the Obama administration has been trying to allay two fears among voters, them being:

1. That the quality of their existing health insurance would deteriorate
2. That the federal deficit would balloon.

Unfortunately, Team Obama – which includes his PR-department – has not succeeded in its effort. Instead of those fears diminishing, more people have actually started to fret.

It’s the Senate, stupid!
On another front, popular support for the current system (if you can call it that) is growing and solidifying, according to this poll. Yes, it’s Rasmussen which always has a slant to the right, but the development was to be expected: as the debate intensifies, more people turn to the subject of health care and start forming their opinions. As more people take a stance on their convictions, polls like these are likely to show a more crystallizing support for the current system, especially among those people who currently have affordable health insurance.

Team Obama will tell you that all this is no surprise, that they actually saw this coming, etcetera. Of course they’ll say that; downplaying is their job. But it is more than a safe bet that the numbers are actually worrying them.

Why? Because they may embolden first-term Blue Dog Democrats to suddenly turn against health care reform. These Democrats hail from states where the majority of voters usually votes for Republicans. Many of those voters were turned off by the deficit spending of George W. Bush, “one of their own”, and so many Republican voters stayed at home, allowing Democrats, independents and some angry Republicans to vote into office conservative Democrats – DINOs, “Democrats In Name Only”, the Democratic version of the reviled RINOs, “Republicans In Name Only”.

If  the idea takes hold among those voters that Obama’s final plan will indeed increase the federal deficit, even for a short period (as is expected), it will become very hard for Team Obama to convince the DINOs to vote in favour of his plan.

Whatever that may turn out to be – with a public option or without, covering all Americans or leaving out a few, a cooperative plan or not – one thing is sure: momentum is not on Team Obama’s side on this one. He’d better shift back into campaign mode and go on the stump.

Hillary Clinton should not become Obama’s
Secretary of State, but should remain in the Senate instead, working to preserve unity among Democrats.

Having her on board, working in the Senate to clear the health care initiative, is of far more importance than having her out of the country all the time — regardless of how politically expedient it would be for Barack Obama to have her out of his way.

When the new Congress convenes, Democrats will have a strong majority in both chambers. Not the filibuster-breaking majority they wanted, but still. However, the mere fact that the Democrats will not have such a majority, means that they will still have to make deals with some Republican members of Congress in order to get proposals passed. In that reality, it would be a smart move to have Reid work the Democrats on the left while Clinton works the Democrat ‘Blue Dogs’ and the moderate Republicans. (Okay, the few moderate Republicans that still remain after ‘Bloody Tuesday’ of last November 4.)

Of course, there will be times when Clinton will want to make a fist and celebrate her own, possibly vengeful victories over the Obama White House. So be it; that’s what you get when you essentially copy the old Roman ways of governance. You get a rowdy Senate, with senior Senators who see themselves as the Saviours of the Nation. Again, so be it. Obama will have to deal with it and he probably can, thanks to people like Rahm Emanuel.

The smart old lion of the Democrats, Ted Kennedy, probably sees things the same way and has therefore undercut the entire Secretary of State-game for Obama by publicly asking Clinton to lead the health insurance initiative.

By doing so publicly, Hillary can’t turn the offer down; thanks to her hard work trying to get her own failed health care initiative through Congress back in 1993, turning down Kennedy’s request would be equivalent to her erasing part of her legacy.

And if there is one thing the Clintons hold dear, it is their legacy.

It isn’t often that one gets to see an example of hatred that is so blinding that spouters of political bile jump into a trap with eyes wide open. Yet that is the case with the right-wing extremists who have thrown themselves like a pack of howling wolves onto Graeme Frost and his family. Like hideous vampires mad for blood who have found a new born baby in its crib, Michelle Malkin, Rush Limbaugh and the other Undead are feasting on middle-class flesh while their hideous laughter and screaming fills the humid air. But all this time they don’t realise that many, many people who identify with the Frosts are learning a valuable lesson: the right-wing extremists of the GOP hate white, middle-class American familes.

Graeme Frost, as a short reminder, is the 12-year-old son of the Frost family, a quite average, suburbian middle-class American family. Dad has his own job and isn’t doing bad (considering the size of the family), mom is putting all her energy into the family, and the kids all go to school. So far, no problem. But the Frost family allowed the Democratic Party to use Graeme Frost in the party’s denunciation of president’s Bush veto of State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) legislation. The Democrats in Congress wanted the SCHIP scheme expanded to allow more children to be covered by it, but president Bush stood ground on principle, arguing that by expanding it the way the Democrats wanted, the states’ program would become a “federal” program.

Instead of putting a senator or a governor up for the task to rebut the president’s move during the weekly Democratic rebuttal by radio, the Democrats set Graeme Frost front and center, claiming that the boy would have been dead had it not been for SCHIP. The boy has had a life-threatening disease and survived, making Graeme Frost a Democratic poster boy for the Democrats.

True to fashion, the messager was attacked, and not the message itself. The werewolves threw themselves on Frost immediately, yelping that the Frost family was making more than enough money to pay for Graeme’s medical bills themselves. They live in a $260,000 home in Baltimore, Malkin and Limbaugh and the others of Dracula’s Castle pointed out, and daddy Frost even has three cars. To the vampires, this is is proof that the Frosts — and thus many American middle-class families — don’t need the SCHIP money. And even if they did, surely the Frosts could have made do with just one car, selling the two others?

The trap set out for the Undead had big neon signs that were flashing “TRAP!”, but to no avail – the vampires fell right in and are now in fact aiding the Democrats. Because ever since Graeme Frost’s appearance before the Democratic microphone, Malkin and Limbauhg and their ilk have been trashing the average, white, American middle-class family. What’s more, they have been after a family of which the husband and father is self-employed. Hmmm – white, middle-class, self-employed, hard working, some debt there, more than 2 kids — wait a minute! That’s one of the GOP’s most beloved demographics in elections! So far, Hillary Clinton’s campaign has jumped on the matter, putting up a vigorous defense for Frost while Giuliani and Romney’s campaigns seem to have seen the neon signs – and are thus far keeping a distance.

Hee-hee. What a laugh. Not only have the Democrats got most Republicans with a brain cornered because they know that going after a 12-year-old does not look good, the right-wing extremists are — in the name of their beloved GOP — bashing away at your average, middle-class, voting white family. If I were the DNC’s national campaign strategist, I’d put the name ‘Graeme Frost’ right up where with Iraq, social security and health care for the coming presidential election. The Vampires are eager enough to help out the Democratic campaign, it seems, so why not?

So, what’s next. Ummm, how about… An 11-year-old girl called Juanita from Nevada? Or – no, Arizona? Wait wait, even better – Florida!