WH to Senate: "We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately."

[SpartanDem]

With health reform's first test vote on the Senate floor less than 72 hours away, a platoon of top strategists — including pollsters Mark Mellman and Geoff Garin, incoming White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer and deputy White House chief of staff Jim Messina — met with Democratic Senators Thursday afternoon to impress upon those who might be wavering that everyone's political fate is now joined with the success or failure of President Obama's top domestic priority

Addressing the Senators over lunch in the Mansfield Room just off the chamber, Mellman quoted Benjamin Franklin: "We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately." According to one person who was there, Mellman invoked memories of 1994, when the party lost control of both houses of Congress in the wake of its failure to enact Bill Clinton's health care initiative. And he noted that the chief casualties in that election had been moderates, many of whom had tried to distance themselves from the President. What Democrats will need more than anything else in this midterm-election season, Mellman said, is for Obama and his agenda to succeed.

The White House team also pledged whatever support the Senators might want, including visits to their states by Vice President Biden and making Administration officials available for interviews with home-state media. Some of the very tactics that helped get Obama elected, the team said, could be brought to bear now. Messina told them it will be important to achieve parity against the opposition on the airwaves, with paid advertising and surrogates; to overwhelm them with ground organization; and to "stand for something, go for it, and always play offense."

Members of the team also said it is important to frame the message carefully — emphasizing, for instance, estimates by the Congressional Budget Office that the health overhaul will save money in the long run, reassuring seniors who are afraid of seeing Medicare cut and stressing new provisions like ones that would protect people from becoming uninsurable as a result of pre-existing health conditions.
(Watch TIME's video "Uninsured Again.")



Read more: http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1941119,00.html#ixzz0XNkszvSZ

[truedelphi]

1. It is a shame that what is important to the WH right now is

Barack Obama and the Dem party's success and not the outright and desperate need of a nation of people who need health care.

But then, We the People are only voters, not lobbyists.

[emilyg]

2. +1

[saracat]

4. +1 But then we were never who the HCR was about anyway.

[Clio the Leo]

5. - 5

If the GOP gets back in control of Congress then we're gonna have a LOT more to worry about than whether or not the PO is as robust as we like it.

Say hello to your new Speaker of the House....



.... his name is John. He likes to abuse progressives for fun.

[RepublicanElephant]

24. yuck! something for dems to think about if they sit-out election day or waste their

vote on another party in tight races.

[Arkana]

26. Oompa-Loompa doompa-dee-doo...

[Teaser]

8. fail.

.

[CakeGrrl]

10. There's the attitude that invariably helps the Republicans back to power

They know how to unite against Democrats when they need to. They do it time and again.

And here the Dem factions sit, unable to get with their own President against the Republican opposition because they are incapable of seeing the forest for the trees.

Dems just don't deserve to hold majorities, however slim or fractious, if they can't even muster basic opposition to the Republicans on things like this.

[HopeOverFear]

11. +1

[CitizenLeft]

27. absolutely.

thank you.

[karynnj]

12. You miss the point - The WH wants health care for the same reasons Democrats have stated for years

BUT they are using the political truth that Obama and the Democrats will do better if they are viewed as successful. They already have all the people who will vote for it on the need for healthcare.

It has nothing to do with lobbyists!

[truedelphi]

17. I guess I have been living on a different planet than you have.

First Barack Obama, who I guess is the same Barack Obama who ran last year, actually won the election last year. He won on a promise of "Change we can believe in."

You are free to beleive that the POOR WITTLE DEMOCRATS jsut cannot get what they want at all cuz of hte mean ol' Repugs and the mean ol Blue DOgs. It is a free oligarchy, after all. (At least in terms of the blogosphere.)

But before his Admin even starts, he gives away the economy to Geithner (Kissinger influenced) and Bernanke.

Geithner's pedigree is this - he spent so much time out of our nation when he was growing up that his answer to one Congress person about his decisions was "Your government does not have..." "Your government!!" He doesn't consider this country to be OUR GOVERNMENT - but YOUR GOVERNMENT. He works perhaps more for the baking families of England than for this nation, which I guess is not his country at all.

Fluffing out Geithner's resume we have this - he was sent by the IMF to "help" Japan in the nineties. There were two business models to choose from to get them out of their recession, and Geithner chose the one that helped the recession remain a long lasting curse on the Japanese (To this day, they continue to laugh at the man, even when he goes over there in person.)

So we have watched as Bernanke and Geihtner have given away a total of two trillion outright to Wall Street interests. (No one really knows as so far the Federal Reserve has not been audited. Which may be a good thing, as Bernanke as vowed to throw our entire economic situation into chaos.) A TMUCH OF THE ELEVENT RILLION AND COUNTING THAT WE SEE AS wALL sTREET'S fEDERAL gOVERNMENT GUARANTEES COME FROM bERNANKE TO WALL STREET, PAID FOR BY THE MIDDLE INCOMED.

Now as far as the world of the health insurance reform, Obama seemed like a reasonably intelligent man. He even ran on Universal SIngle PAyer HC as the "Only logical choice when it comes to HCR." And he went on to say when camapigning in 2004, that allhe needed to help the people of Illinois get that was "A majority in both houses and a Democratic President."

He was so intelligent that one would assume that he had at some point studied up on the playbook of successful Presidents like FDR and LBJ. Even if he had never bothered studying those two, he might have intuitively known from his days a community organizer that when you win big, you press your advantage on the court - you don't stop before making the winning shot through the hoop and ask the other team if they might not prefer that you take the shot at their basket hoop instead.

But hat is what Obama did. He took a 62% mandate and ALSO a 65 to 76% "We want Universal HC Reform" from his audience and abandoned this power surge and instead went around and talked to every RW lunatic fringe group he could find out there.

Did LBJ go around the South the summer of his Civil Rights Act and ASK THE DARN SEGREGATIONISTS what they wanted? And if he had, we would not have had the powerful bill hat we have now, that has become par of his legacy.

There are two sectors of the Democratic Party - the DLC and the progressives. Unfortunately for the progressives to succeed we need the middle-inocmed Obama worshippers to look at the hard sad scary facts of how this Adminsitration is selling us out. Right and left. From the ecological Monsanto take over of the FDA and Ag Department to the continued military build ups.

This has not been change. but trather as another wiser DU'er stated "Chains."

[karynnj]

19. Yeah, we all know that by now a President Kucinich

would have ended both wars, passed a single payer plan, having hypnotized about 50 Senators to cast yeses with the approximately 10 who otherwise would. He would have had the unemployment rate down to 2% (below normal mobility) and completely cleaned the banking system.

[Cha]

22. Right...like that's ever going to happen.

[truedelphi]

25. No I was simply hoping that the man who ran for the Senate Seat for Illinois

In 2004 would indeed be playing Super Master Inter Dimensional Chess and actually revive his love for Single Payer Universal Health Care reform.

How was I to know that when he said what I thought was "Change we can believe in" he meant "Chains"

[slipslidingaway]

14. Lobbyists invited, not for profit advocates silenced :( nt

[quantass]

16. +1

[Unvanguard]

20. Success for the Democrats is the ONLY way to full that "outright and desperate" need.

Don't pretend otherwise.

[Cha]

23. Thank you..I've had it with all the

pretending.

[Cha]

21. Oh, is that the negative fail push you got out

of that? Always looking for the Doom and Gloom and you're gonna find it. Every single time.

[theophilus]

3. Mr. Obama's success better be important to any who wish to see this country continue to be

any kind of a success. If a Repug takes over in 12 I believe our "goose is cooked".

[GoCubsGo]

9. Judging by Boehner's orange glow...

It looks like he was cooked a long time ago. Or, perhaps "roasted" is a better term?

[vaberella]

18. Yeah..he looks like an Oompa Loompa. n/t

[Clio the Leo]

6. Love it.............

.... and I dont know why it's not obvious to the entire caucus.

[depakid]

7. Props to Messina- that's long overdue

[slipslidingaway]

13. Clinton asked not for profit advocates to back down, this time they were...

mostly ignored from the beginning with the WH summit.

:(

[quiet.american]

15. Glad to see this. nt