listen up !

While looking for some of Nate’s wonky goodness on the 76% Want A Public Option poll, I found a significant nugget:

Nate makes all kinds of reality based points about Healthcare Reform’s fate in the hands of Congress, but considering how numbers-crazy they all are inside the beltway, I found his conclusion significant.

It is easy to believe the White House is simply following the Inside-The-Beltway-CW on Clinton Healthcare Reform – "The Clinton’s Were Too Hands-On and Oversold It!"

Swami Silver does his usual ungodly parsing of the numbers and came up (quel surprise!) with something completely different:

The approval polling suggests that Clinton was benefiting when he was doing the most direct salesmanship of the bill. A joint address to Congress on September 22, 1993 was met with a sudden jump in Clinton’s approval rating. Although that bounce was short-lived, his approval rating then continued to improve throughout the balance of 1993 as a health care bill was presented to Congress in November. It was only when the bill was left to linger before Congress in the spring of 1994 that both its fortunes and those of Clinton began to suffer

Hello, McFly !!!

Nate includes his responsible and reality-based take on the current lay of the land, possible scenarios, and contingencies . . . however

Nate concludes:

This has been an extremely cautious White House to date; they have scrupulously avoided doing anything that might ruffle Congressional or public feathers and they are probably afraid of gambling on a specific plan and losing.

But as Neville Chamberlain learned long ago, and Spock learned in the latest version of Star Trek, caution does not always equate with safety. It is time for the White House to take hold of this debate and not let go.