You Can't Always Get What You Want

Or in the case of Democrats and health care reform, you can't get anything.

A day after former Obama campaign manager David Plouffe is elevated to a more senior adviser status at the White House and the DNC, Plouffe pens an op ed in the Washington Post in which he seems to suggest that much of President Obama's promise to ban pre-existing conditions is now being jettisoned. Plouffe wrote in the op ed, which was certainly cleared with the White House, if not written by them:

Parents won't have to worry their children will be denied coverage just because they have a preexisting condition.

Their children? The original promise - even the bad Senate bill - protects everyone, of any age, from being denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions. Now it's just children?

And before anyone argues that Plouffe was simply using children as an example - that the legislation could still cover everyone - look at what else happened in the last two days. CBS News reported that the pre-existing conditions promise was now looking unlikely. But even worse, the NYT talked to folks on the Hill and health policy experts, and they were told the compromise package might just protect kids under the age of 19 from being denied for pre-existing conditions. No one else.

It would sure be one hell of a coincidence if Plouffe, on behalf of the White House, is now talking about kids being protected from pre-existing conditions when the growing chatter in town is that only kids may now be protected from pre-existing conditions - that the rest of us are about to get tossed under the Martha Coakley bus.

Not a coincidence at all.  It's looking like passing the "Republican health care plan" was the plan all along.  Massachusetts voters said time and time again the health care plan wasn't good enough.  The White House's response appears to be "make the plan worse and have the Republicans sign on to it too."

No bed wetting, Plouffe says, while unzipping his fly and peeing over the balcony onto the crowd below.  Pass a meaningful health care reform bill, Plouffe says, while looking to neuter it. Don't accept any lectures on spending, he says while President Obama is talking about deficit reduction. Make sure voters understand what the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act did for the economy when he remarks when the White House lost that battle back in February because they gave in to the GOP and made it too small.

If you guys don't pass a kick ass health care bill, you're done. It really is that simple.

[UPDATE 12:05 PM] Wisdom from BooMan:

I have to laugh.  They're still worried about provisions of a bill, when the whole bill is virtually dead.  Worry about the whole bill, for chrissakes.  This has been the problem on the left all year long.  

Yep.