Will health-care reform wind up DOA?

Hector returns to Troy: is this how health care reform is going to end up again?

I'm convinced that in 1993, the failure of the Clinton administration and the Democratic-majority Congress to get comprehensive health-care reform passed was the biggest blow to Clinton's administration that allowed the "Gingrich Revolution" to seize a majority in Congress. And we all know how well that worked out.

The torture issue isn't going away, no matter how much the administration and pooh-bahs of both parties and the Establishment press want it to. But that issue won't give the Bircherized Republican Party a chance for a strong comeback in 2010. Allowing health-care reform to be pre-compromised to death will.

And Robert Reich worries that is what may be happening right now: The Health Care Cave-In TPM 05/18/09.

I don't want to be looking at John Boehner as the House Majority Leader in 2011. And I even more don't want to be looking at Jeb Bush as President and Liz Cheney as Vice President in 2013. The Democrats have the big chance they wanted. But now they have to deliver. Pre-caving to the anti-health-care reform lobbies won't do it. Having "Give-'em-whine Harry" Reid as Majority Leader in the Senate complaining that he can't get anything useful done with merely an overwhelming Democratic majority in the Senate isn't exactly what the Party should have to deliver the goods.

And if the Dems actually buy into the phase-out-Social-Security scam ...

Tags: democratic majority, health care reform