The Politico’s Jonathan Martin reported this morning that Rahm Emanuel warned leaders of liberal groups in a private meeting this week that it was time to stop running ads attacking Blue Dog and “centrist” Dems on health care.
I’m told, however, that Emanuel went quite a bit further than this.
Sources at the meeting tell me that Emanuel really teed off on the Dem-versus-Dem attacks, calling them “f–king stupid.” This was a direct attack on some of the attendees in the room, who are running ads against Dems right now.
Tellingly, Rahm raised the specter of a loss on health care, sources at the meeting say — which suggests that the White House may be less certain about victory than officials allow publicly.
“He started out with, `We’re 13 and 0 going into health care,’” one source at the meeting said, meaning that Rahm was touting the White House’s string of pre-health care legislative victories.
“This momentum is necessary to do all these other things. We have a lot of momentum right now, and any loss spoils that momentum that we’ve built up,” was how the source described the gist of what Rahm said. A Rahm spokesperson didn’t return an email for comment.
Yeah, it’s really fucking stupid to attack Democrats who are acting like Republicans. Liberal groups should just STFU and let Rahm, the Blue Dogs, Max Bauchus and Ben Nelson get in the way of health care reform. This is where the cult of personality thing comes in, something I’ve been writing about for more than five years. Obama is only concerned with getting a couple of Republicans to join Democrats in voting something he calls “health care reform.” Doesn’t make a bit of difference what exactly it does or doesn’t do, just has to be a bill that he can sign that changes some element – however minor – of the health care delivery system. If he does this, he will claim victory and move on. If he doesn’t, he takes a political hit. The liberal groups running the ads and anyone without health insurance (or without adequate health insurance) are interested in actual reform, where everyone gets covered, and costs come down.
Obama’s interest has become almost totally dislocated from the interests of the left, the platform of the Democratic Party, and anyone lacking proper health insurance. It’s now likely that if he wins, everyone else loses. Heckuva Job, President Massengill!
(And don’t even get me started on their supposed 13-0 record. They seriously want to take credit for their legislative “victories?”)