Flying Pink Unicorns

Obama's all in

First, in news that just broke moments ago, according to several key democratic members, the House will vote on the Senate bill tomorrow, and not use "Deem and pass." This is a good thing, in my view.

To use a fairly well known poker metaphor, as Andrew has, Obama has moved all of his chips into the middle of the table. He is going all the way with his hand, and he'll either win big or lose big, and very likely we'll know which of these tomorrow. Its better than 80-20 now that he'll win big. It is to his great and everlasting credit, win or lose, that he finally moved all in. It did take him long enough.

A bit of big-picture review. My friend Andrew, who is nearly always right about policy matters, has been bitterly critical of Obama on health care, and not without quite a bit of justification. For example, he was saying about June 2009 that Obama could not, under any circumstances, leave the writing of the Bill to Congress. He said, and I'm paraphrasing, that Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi could not be trusted to organize a trip to McDonalds, let alone a hugely complex piece of vital legislation. Reid in particular has seemed weak, the various congress people each had their own agenda, etc. Instead, he was calling on Obama to get in the trenches, write the bill in essence, then allow cosmetic tweaking and try and jam it down Harry and Nancy's throats. I'm the PRESIDENT, Andrew basically wanted Obama to say. I disagreed at the time, saying that giving Congress a few more months of headroom was good politics and made good sense. I think in the fullness of time he was right and I was wrong. Obama WRITING the bill was never in the cards, but he needed to be MUCH more aggressive earlier on. To use poker terminology, Obama was playing a good game of LIMIT poker. In limit poker, your bet sizes are rigidly limited. You either bet the amount you are allowed, or you don't bet at all. You can't move your big stack of chips in the middle and force your opponent to either call or fold. In no limit poker, by contrast, you can (and occasionally do) move all of your chips into the middle.

Obama was making small demands, small shows of strength. In short, he was playing limit poker. Sure he wanted health care reform, of course, but he wasn't exactly setting any presidential effort records to get it. There were set piece speeches and events, but not a consistent, sustained effort.

Then in January, Scott Brown in Massachusetts became the 41st Republican vote in the Senate-- the Democrats could no longer defeat a Republican filibuster with only democratic votes. And no GOP members wanted to play along. Which was very disappointing, but it was clear by about March 2009 that the GOP was going to oppose Obama in lockstep on big things. When John McCain isn't with you on immigration reform, you know the party's gone nuts.

Anyway, after some brief talk of moving onto the economy and not focusing on health care, Harry, Nancy and Obama have been focusing non-stop on it, like a laser beam, for weeks. This in the face of an economy still deeply troubled and with polls showing the health care reform effort deeply unpopular. This is a truly astounding act of political courage by the democrats. Courage and democrats has not often been used in the same sentence in recent years (at least not without the modifier "lacking," or its equivalent) and for good reason. The democrats have by and large taken the easy way out, taking small shots at the GOP, but not frontally attacking their idiocy. In short, the democrats, like Obama, have been playing limit poker.

Well that all changed a few weeks back, beginning publically with the televised summit. In having the summit at all, Obama basically announced that he was moving all in. Enough of this limit crap, he in essence said, I'm playing no limit, and I'm playing for keeps. All in boys and girls. That drastic change in presidential attitude, on behalf of a pretty crappy bill, and in the face of stiff public opposition, tells me that Obama really believes that health care is MONSTER important, and is willing to take gigantic political risks in order to further the great moral and economic cause of serious health care reform. And he deserves great praise, in my view, for moving all in.

Tomorrow, in all likelihood, the final cards will be dealt and we'll see Obama achieve a huge, historic, glorious, hard-earned victory. But it will have been earned only because Obama finally moved all in.