Prioritizing The Disaster

NY Times:

The White House on Thursday signaled the outlines of its strategy for breaking the partisan logjam holding up President Obama’s agenda, saying Democrats would move quickly to underline their commitment to fixing the broken economy and to build an election-year case against Republicans if they do not cooperate.

With Mr. Obama’s health care overhaul stalled on Capitol Hill, Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, said in an interview that Democrats would try to act first on job creation, reducing the deficit and imposing tighter regulation on banks before returning to the health measure, the president’s top priority from last year.

But Mr. Obama quickly got a taste of how difficult it would be to bring the opposition party on board. 

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

Or is that the definition of abject stupidity?  Really guys?  Deficit reduction and working with the GOP comes before health care?  And you think you're going to get this passed?

[UPDATE 10:41 AM] Bob Cesca's optimism is almost equaled by the painful truth.

It's easy to freak out these days. I'm as guilty as anyone. But I simply can't see the Democrats failing to pass healthcare reform. Democrats would lose their majorities. Republicans would take over and, eventually, they would do the only thing they could accomplish in a completely gridlocked government: investigating and impeaching the president. And before you chastise me for being over-the-top, remember the 1990s.

But that's all political. Failing to pass healthcare reform will succeed in killing 44,000 Americans every year. It's always worth reinforcing that Democratic failure would mean a new 9/11 every month. Unacceptable.

Agreed. Unacceptable.  But by that math, we've already lost 22,000 Americans thanks to the Dems no passing this damn bill.  That should infuriate the living hell out of all of us.