News that Boccieri has flipped to Yes points to more flipping and a final crawl to 216. News that Stupak seeks a compromise with the Senate is clever cover not for a flip but to back off the youth attack teams from OFA and etcetera. Note from Salena Zito, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, that the Boccieri flip makes her think that Mrs. Pelosi has her 216.  No new word on Altmire or Dahlkemper or Ellsworth.

There will be Phoenicians.  

The damage is deep and consistent.

All Democrats are now on DefCon 3 going to 2 after the vote.  The GOP is not a health party, but it is the default oppo and will enjoy the rage of the Babbits and and their pals.

The deep blue CDs in urban heat islands are the only safe territory in the North and West.  Any Democratic Yes or No vote who survives the swarms of B-24 Liberators launching on Washington will be news, will deserve a museum trophy case right next to other impossible treasures such as the gold coins of Phoenicians.

There will be blood.

What is the plan to withstand the wave of revenge?  Masada-like Democrats?  Is this the Rahm/Ax plan for permanent siege?  Note that POTUS has just called for the entire Democratic Caucus to meet at the White House at 4 PM Eastern time Saturday 20.  Why?  Pep talk?  Team spirit?  Draw straws?

Nancy Pelosi Delivers.  

The element that is most enjoyable to imagine is Delay or Hastert or Boehner, or even Gingrich back in the day, delivering a suggestively Disneyworld pitch about a totally partisan power play in the Joan Rivers fashion of Nancy Pelosi.  That’s entertainment.

  

Hoyer does not have 216 on St. Patrick’s Day, and this brings a nervous grin from Minority Whip Cantor. Source writes that the Democrats are boasting they have 211 as of Wednesday morning.

Since no one who has the count knows if it is accurate, since it is theory until the day of, this means that the majority remains unconvinced of the argument, awaiting the next pivot.

Best source remarks that the Democrats are boasting of 211 because they do not have it, and are gaming their own members.

The next pivot may be the CBO score of the so-far unrevealed side-car legislation that goes into the reconciliation bill.

Word last eve that there is trouble with the final cost, and Big Pharma was dragooned to Rahm Emanuel at the White House to hand over more cash give-backs.

The score looks to be unhappy making, and note that Harry Reid is announcing only a partial score of pieces of the reconciliation sidecar. The CBO does not fib, but it can only plug in the assumptions that are sent over. All the assumptions have not been assembled, and the one that have been may be getting swollen costs. Who knows?

This is a major problem. Not only is there no transparency — but also the guys with the bill don’t know what the bill is or costs. Hilarious.  

Below find the latest spam video from OFA that is attached to a general cheat sheet about how I am to call a member of Congress and congratulate him/her for supporting “reform.”

Note that the video includes another “Queen for a Day” healthcare nightmare that somehow will be fixed if and when we pay more for less.  Okay.   POTUS preaches to the choir like no one since Jim Wright.  Note that the choir behind POTUS is getting better, like a Coke commercial for who likes the “Real Thing,”or a GM commercial about who is ready to go with the new dream car (no wheels, no engine, no gas, no coasts, no car, just walk!).

The OFA is off course and doesn’t know how to get back on the main road.  It is as if a posse of strangers swerved into the mainstream for a few months (August to November, 2008) and since then have drifted back to their normal triteness.

Now they are frustrated that we do not hear them.  Retail politics is about listening to the voters, not the voters listening to you.  POTUS is deaf.

POTUS sailed into the White House without an education in retail politics.

Assertion is not persuasion.  Shrug.  And telling old wives tales is not leadership.  Shrug.

37 Gone.  

Spoke Salena Zito re the undecided Democrats in her beat for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, and found a whip count that does not favor Mrs. Pelosi.

You will recall that the Hill whip count lists 37 No votes, and Mrs. Pelosi can only give 37 No votes before healthcare fails to reach 216 majority.  Therefore any No vote from the 70 undecideds.

Zito identified Brad Ellsworth of Indiana 8 as a No vote or else he can abandon his campaign to win the open Senate sea against Dan Coats.  Also Zito identified Kathy Dahlkemper of Pa 3 as a No vote, from a conservative Catholic district.  Also a possible No from Charlie Wilson of Ohio 6, another Catholic conservative district.  And a No from Tim Ryan of Ohio 17, more Catholic conservatives.

The biggest doubt she registered was for Jason Altmire of Pennsylvania 4, who is faced with a weak opponent for November, but who would ignite opposition if he votes Yes.  Zito says that Altmire is undecided, but that if he votes No, he will hold district “forever.”

Without a sense of humor, politics is insufferable, and the strangeness of the Tea Party phenomenon is that every time I see someone who claims to be a representative of the Tea Party, such as this dour Michael Patrick Leahy, it worries me that there is no sense of the ridiculous in the Tea Party — and a complete vacuum of irony.

Leahy is a founding father? Are the other founders grumpy, too? Is this the smarty-aleck of the outfit or just a fellow with time on his hands?

Worrisome and puzzling. The notion that there truly is a competing Coffee Party makes it even sillier that Leahy decides that he has to restate endlessly what the Tea Party think it is, or what he thinks it is.

The Coffee Party? Hey, Leahy, consider it is likely a prank. A handsome genius puts up a graphic with coffee cups popping up on the screen and claims this is spontaneous growth?  Looks like a prank. Sounds like a send-up. Note (above) that the Coffee Party declined to appear opposite Leahy.  And Leahy is happy to be there, debating the empty chair of java.  Presents the possibility that Leahy is a send-up?  Nah.  Dueling beverages?

It remains a mystery why anyone fears the Tea Party.  It is also possible that the Tea Party is a send-up.

It can feel these days as if we have wandered into a novel under construction by a distracted Sinclair Lewis.  ”It Can’t Happen Here” turns into “It Can Happen, But It Won’t Be That Scary Here.”  What Leahy has to say is routine, derivative, unhelpful, a sturdy B for civics.

The question unanswered is, why are we listening to Leahy?  Why does anyone fear Leahy?  The fellow may be humorless, but he is clearly rational and dull, the kind of guy who can supervise and manage and learn.  Shrug.  ”Limited government… free markets… and …”  Leahy does spring upon the name Soros with regard the Coffee Party, which he declares, “…big government… collectivist…”  Shrug.  Again, a B for partisanship.  Perhaps I am an easy grader.  B-.  

   

“Hurt Locker” wins lavish and politically sophisticated attention from Hollywood but not from the young people deployed to theater, and this tells me that what has happened is that the war in the Ummah has now shifted into a safe enough political place for the scriptwriters and their producers that it is possible to present the romance and sentimentality without thinking about the on-going threat and fight.

Kathryn Bigelow’s “Hurt Locker” is a recognizable and matter-of-fact version of late produced Hollywood Horse Opera, more like “Ulzana’s Raid” and less like “The Searchers” or the prototypical 1939 John Ford oater, “Stagecoach” with its line about “Injun territory:” young rebel in a dutiful band of brothers, surrounded by Injuns, family and meaning somewhere back in the world of women (Sam’s Club shopping), punctuated by explosions and a sense of futility and injustice.

The “Hurt Locker” Iraqis are far more compelling than our rootless hero cowboys, and this irony is an advance on the John Ford Injuns, who were just marauding demons.

The responses (above) suggest that young soldiers in theater do not recognize or even approve of the rebellion theme in the “Hurt Locker” screenplay.

Band of brothers does not work when rebels act singularly on their vanity or doubts. Why back up a selfish or impudent person; why trust him to back you up? 

What is also apparent in the familiar tropes of “Hurt Locker” is that Hollywood is not comfortable with the facts of the war in Iraq. The received narrative that worked for candidate Barack Obama was that the war was illegal and lost, and that it is necessary to evacuate Iraq asap.

The facts do not support this prejudice. Yet Hollywood must now follow an Academy Aware movie (which didn’t earn well, but was cheap to make) with other much more lavish affairs. The new Matt Damon superman drama “Green Zone” looks to be a quick score on the Horse Opera theme, with a bigger budget and more defined virtue. More like a video game and less like a gabfest is the game.

Hollywood goes to war, once it is safely removed from the political debate. It is too early to measure Afghanistan.  POTUS Obama has not found a narrative in AfPak that Hollywood can embrace. The pursuit of AQ is not a useful metaphor for a business that depend on selling tickets world-wide. Horse opera, yep; stalking Jihadis as if they are deer or King Kong, nope.  (Detail: David Petraeus travels to New Hampshire to give a speech: the Iraq theme may be coming back for 2012.  Smile.)

Horse-Trading Farmhand.  

Speaking Dan Henninger, WSJ, on Friday 12, re the difference between Senate Majority Leader and VPOTUS and then the accidental POTUS LBJ and POTUS Obama.

LBJ built the foundation for the Great Society by starting in the Senate with the extremely cautious and conservative (and Jim Crow) Democratic bloc in the South as early as 1957 — passing the 1957 Civil Rights Act one vote at a time. LBJ argued that it was critical that the bill pass while maintaining good and meaningful relations between the opponents and proponents.

LBJ also argued for incrementalism.

The 1957 bill was only four pages long and did not achieve anything close to the comprehensive protection of rights in the Civil Rights legislation of 1964 and 1965.  LBJ believed in small bites in order to move to eating the whole pie without Richard Russell smashing the table and chairs and ending the meal.

Also, once the farm-boy LBJ was POTUS, he horse-traded fiercely to bring along the reluctant Western senators, such as promising them new dams and irrigation money.

The contrast with how the rookie Senator Obama has conducted his administration is Sun and Moon. POTUS Obama has reached for a vast reordering of the economy without any votes from the GOP and by damaging if not wrecking the seats of conservative Democrats from the South.

Not only is POTUS Obama not LBJ, but also POTUS Obama is draining the Democratic Party of the strength it has built in the New South.

Spoke David Drucker, Roll Call, to learn that the Parliamentarian of the Senate has ruled that  the Senate version of the healthcare bill must be voted on by a majority of the House Democrats (216) and then must go to POTUS for signature into law.  At that point, the Democratic Senate must move the so-called sidecar bill to fix the Cornhusker trick, the pro-life trick, and all the other pork in the Senate.

Am told that the Parliamentarian cannot rule out the GOP amendments endlessly.  The GOP calls it the vote-arama.

This process can last until November.  And when and if the GOP changes one comma in the healthcare law (act), it must go back to the House for another vote of 216.  (Late news: rumor on the Hill is to call for the vote on Wednesday 17.

Also, it is said that Stupak and his ten or eleven fellows cannot be solved — since they cannot fix the Senate bill for abortion banning — and that Mrs. Pelosi will make up for it elsewhere.

Also the GOP is saying now that the whip is ten short.  I still hear under 200 also.)

Whip count again with John McCormack, Weekly Standard, along with Margaret Hoover FNC, and John Avlon, Daily Beast, to find that the number remains under 200 for the 216 needed by Mrs. Pelosi.  

McCormack spoke to Bart Stupak of Michigan, leader of the well-established opposition to the Senate healthcare bill because it does not contain anti-abortion language. Stupak does not have a solution to how the Senate can rearrange itself to suit the Stupak amendment in the House bill. Nor does McCormack or anyone I have spoken to have a solution to how to include a prohibition in the Senate bill or the so-called sidecar.

Stupak does assert that he will not accept a deal from the White Hose that somehow the language will be satisfied in another bill down the road.

Stupak is joined in his opposition by Oberstar of Minnestota, Lipinski of Illinois and others, who are firm against the Senate bill.  Stupak is the story.

Above, the shrewd Evan Newmark argues that the Democrats will suffer mightily once the healthcare is passed.

Stupak makes me pause.  How does anyone solve Stupak? One of the most liberal records in the House, Upper Michigan, hard-charger, and now he is the Obama administration’s immovable obstacle.  

 “…I think it’s realistic because the American people are desperate…”  HHS Sec Kathleen Sebelius was the early warning system on healthcare last year, when she commented on Sunday talk that the “public option” would not survive the process.  Sebelius is honest and trustworthy, and she knows much more than she speaks.

This presentation does not sound confident.  No one has the whip count by Hoyer and Pelosi, and as of Friday 5 they were not sharing. Sebelius aims to make the process seem critical, timely, urgent, passionate; yet that facts are that there is no good whip count, or even bad whip count, right now.

The Obama administration bases its remarks on the healthcare bill on the aspiration for success with the House vote, not on the confirmation of the House vote.

The whip count is not going to become easier.  Bart Stupak of Michigan has already been targeted by the progressive partisans.  The Blue Dogs are preparing their retirements after November.  

No Good Choices.  

The best explanation I can find as to why POTUS persists against the large odds against the final bill is that there is no alternative, no other choice, no way out.  POTUS goes for the win in the House, at 216 votes, and if he wins, miracle.  And if he loses, hope.

The calculation is that neither a win nor a loss will materially change the wave building to sweep over the Democrats in the House and Senate in November.  Used to be called a tidal wave.

GOP Stoogeship.  

The gem inside this inspiring Missouri River of palaver, in which POTUS reviews his reviews of his reviews of his own mania for reviewing, is the dependent clause, “…where we had a public and substantive debate on healthcare…”  POTUS correctly uses the Blair House gabfest as a tool to demonstrate the bipartisan energy of the search for healthcare victory.

GOP stooges take note: you were used; you were used wittingly; you cooperated in your own stoogeship; you are here revealed as vain fools for the Obama administration. 

Best information this weekend is that the whip count for healthcare in the House is under 200.  The polite way for Speaker Pelosi to say this is that “we’re not there yet.”  The unsolved pieces include the Senate promises to develop a sidecar bill that answers the doubts and manias of the House Democrats.

The number needed is 216 after the sudden departure of Eric Massa and the unfilled seats of Murtha, Wexler and Abercrombie, and the sudden return of Nathan Deal.

The noise about insurance companies, about GOP intransigence and the evils of pre-existing conditions – all that will not change the whip count.  What must happen is the rewriting of the Harry Reid bill so that it suits the Saint Stupak Dirty Dozen on abortion language and the Blue Dog posse all facing immediate, overwhelming, numbing re-elect campaigns if they vote for anything that looks like a deal.  Indiana Jones faced easier adversaries routinely and found a way.

Hail to Mrs. Pelosi when she manages this miracle.

Mention that the White House more and more resembles a snake pit on board the Lusitania.  Is that a periscope?

Where is an administration when a torpedo is a smart career move?

Tale of Two Heads Less than One.   

In Washington, a surprisingly youthful and bold politician, POTUS, introduces a healthcare agenda that will bring on civil war on the Hill on the same day that in California a surprisingly aged and obtuse Jerry Brown, Attorney General of California, introduced himself as a grown-up who has reinvented himself.

The contrast is stunning. Can this be the same party? Sure.

Jerry Brown is running a non-race right now, heaving out generalities and avoid the details of what has to be done in Sacramento.

Speaking Wednesday to Hotel California panel of Jeff Bliss at KSFO and the SF Chronicle political team of Joe Garofoli and Carla Marinucci, re the return of Governor Moonbeam.  Last time Jerry made news was his quixotic run for the presidential nomination for the Democrats in 1992.

Now the Democrats who control the California legislature in Sacramento have decided that Jerry Brown is the last best hope to lead an exhausted, dispirited pauper of a state.  Not the theme on Jerry Brown’s campaign of 1992: “Take Back America.”  We can guess that the new theme will be “Take Back California” to the Moonbeam past.

But if Jerry Brown is a recycled pol, a green maneuver, POTUS is a fresh pol who is going for a win against the polls, the GOP and perhaps his own House.

Spoke David Drucker, Roll Call, and confirmed that POTUS will go on the road over the next weeks to restate what he has said before in the states where Democrat members are dubious to negative on the vote.

Will POTUS change the minds of the “Nos?”  Shrug.  POTUS Moonbeam is not listening to his own party. A solitary campaign.

Jerry Brown doesn’t listen.  POTUS doesn’t listen.

Two heads less than one.  Crack-up underway.  Jerry Brown told Clara Marinucci and Joe Garafoli that he will invite in the Tea Party.

Jerry will say and do anything to win.  Deaf and aimless.  POTUS will say and do anything to win.  Naive?

Vague Jobless.  

Team Obama Spinmeister Larry Summers is making the rounds on cable and with the newsprint types to prepare the public and especially the headline writers for a Shrek-ugly jobless number come Friday March 5. The spin is, “Blame the blizzards of 2010.” This is both careful and cynical Summers.  Summers knows that the jobless figures are distortions of the scale of the problem, since the monthly figure is based upon people looking for work across sixty thousand households and does not take into account people who have stopped looking for work.  Set aside the fact that we all know the unemployment rate on the first Friday of each month is a vague reference.

Still, this March 5 number looks to be a bleary horror, especially in the non-farm payroll jobs lost detail.  There is a small possibility that we are being set up for a surprise.

Never too cynical with a 24-hr news cycle in the hands of the Obamanation.

The driving theme for the jobless rate is that companies are reluctant to hire or rehire because of uncertainty.

The last weeks, Simon Constable and I have been pursuing what we call regime uncertainty caused by the four horsemen of the Obama administration: healthcare, cap and trade, financial reform and tax increases (Bush tax expirations).  We have spoken with  Charlie Dent of 15 PA, Shelley Capito of 2 WV, John Shimkus of 19 IL, and Adrian Smith of 2 NE, and each has told us a different version of uncertainty.  Healthcare and cap and trade are the major risks for hiring in their districts — with the cap and trade bill getting the most mentions.

The weather is not mentioned.

The expectation in the market is that the Shrek-ugly number on Friday March 5 will make the market go up and the White House gloomy.

The disconnect continues between POTUS push on a healthcare monstrosity (abridged?) and the dread of the jobless.  Storm continues.

Payrolls have declined in 24 of the past 25 months. Economists surveyed by MarketWatch are forecasting that payrolls will fall by 85,000 in February, with much of the decline due to the weather. The unemployment rate is expected to rise to 9.8% from 9.7%  

Salena Zito, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review tells me that during her conversation with Jack Murtha in late January, the day before Murtha went into the hospital, that Murtha told her the healthcare bill would not work as constructed. That it was necessary to start over and build a much smaller bill.

Murtha said that the only way to do healthcare was to fashion a much smaller bill with Republican support.  Murtha said the way to work together was to follow the model practiced by Speaker Tip O’Neill and Ronald Reagan thirty years ago.

The ghost of Jack Murtha did not believe in his own leadership or in the path that the Obama administration has chose for reform.  

The reconciliation manipulation between the House and the Senate begins immediately and will play out over the next four weeks, until the Easter break.   John Avlon says that the independent voters will hate this game and turn very negative in the polling.

The panels were mixed as to the question if the GOP will tie up the Senate and do no business in protest.  Avlon thinks it unwise.

We all wondered if the Jim Bunning temper tantrum last week was a warning shot or a maverick maneuver by a retiring veteran.

Reconciliation is so arduous, arcane (the rule was written by Robert Byrd in order to suit much smaller pieces of legislation in the budget process) and unpredictable a mode when used for partisan advantage that there is much room for mischief.

No one disputed much that Washington will not transform into a bickering battle on one subject.

Also, the polls will be painful.

Salena Zito tells me that and the young and earnest Jason Altmire (below) of 4th Pennsylvania, a first-term Democrat who defeated Melissa Hart near Pittsburgh in 2008, has put out a pamphlet that features his conservative feelings but does not mention that he is a Democrat.

Also, Selena Zito indicates that Murtha’s 12th CD is leaning heavily toward the GOP even as soon as the May Special Election. 

The Canada Hockey Team vs. Canada Hockey Cult closing contest at the Vancouver Olympics on Sunday 28, with the USA team allowed on the ice as a designated loser, is a treat to anticipate and a smile when it is done.

Reed Albergotti, WSJ, has told me several times over the last two weeks that he fears for his life if Canada loses.

The Canada hockey cult includes suicides, berserkers, mystics and a collective trance state. One country breathes as one mesmerized worshipper until Canada delivers the gold on home ice.

All other metrics for Canada must wait — the strong loonie, the booming natural resource economy, the cautious and sound banking system, the assertive wonderland of Nunavut, all must wait for that third period horn and Canada wins.

Final score? Canada Hockey Team 5, Canada Hockey Cult 14,000,000.

USA nowhere. Unless? Nah. Too awful to imagine, and Reed Albergotti must escape with his wits, and the destined Martin Brodeur must join the gods on Olympus. 

John McCain discomfits POTUS in a careful exchange during the healthcare chatfest.

McCain first goads POTUS to interrupt and then fires off an angry wit when POTUS tries to dominate the exchange with the pejorative “John,” rather than the formal, “Senator McCain.” POTUS excuse is that “the election is over.” Everyone in the room knows that the election is never over, because there is always another election to revisit the last one.

The midterms are a referendum on the Obama adminstration. POTUS and the struggling White House team know this, and that is the only reason POTUS convened the chat fest in the Blair House.

POTUS is campaigning for his Democratic majority by playing at being the community organizer, and he is campaigning the long way around, talk, talk, talk — a ponderous version of VPOTUS Biden pompous. 

POTUS has not earned the condescension in his voice toward John McCain. Also, John McCain is running for re-election in Arizona, and he is welcome and correct to use the TV time on the chatfest channel to campaign against his primary opponent, the peculiarly Klingon-like J. D. Hayworth, and the unknown Arizona Democrat.

McCain was careful and quick — skills that eluded him in the presidential campaign of 2008.

He scored several stinging points on POTUS with regard healthcare, and that moved POTUS to try to interrupt more than once.

What is especially lovely here is that both candidates know they are forever speaking to their voters, not to those who voted against them.

Since November 2008, John McCain has only gained in the eyes of the Independents and Republicans.  Since the election, POTUS has only weakened in the eyes of the Independents and Democrats.  

John McCain’s stinging, “I’m reminded of that every day…” to POTUS is the kind of jet pilot maneuver that comes just once or twice in a lifetime of contest.  It looks like a legacy YouTube moment.  We shall see.  

The Democrats will wince and snarl at the moment.  The Republicans will wince and smile at the moment.

It is the bons mots test for pros.  If you make them smile, even with irony or gallows humor, you win.  If you make them frown, you lose.

Note that POTUS is disrespectful with his posture, the right hand on the chin, the grimace and stare, the louder tone, speaking to a man twenty-five years his senior who is the heir of admirals of the fleet and who possesses the history citation for the GOP nomination.

There is no treasure to be found in disrespect for seniority, no advantage at all for impatient disdain of the loyal opposition.  

Spoke Steve Dennis and David Drucker of Roll Call Monday re the Obamacare posting on the White House website and learned that the Democrats do not have the votes in either the Senate or the House for what is planned — reconciliation in the Senate (51 votes) followed by majority approval (218 votes) in the House.

Dennis said the House caucus came out of the meeting with shaking-heads and grim faces. No one has a count. No one has whipped the caucus. The cross-currents are ferocious and uncharted.

We tallied the lost votes since the 220 last fall. The Republican vote from Louisiana has nixed the plan.  219.  Four Democrats have retired, flipped or perished (Murtha).  215.  Five more more have gone because of their re-election problems.

As many as ten of the 39 Democrats who voted against it are needed to vote for what they found unacceptable months ago. The best hope is that the members who have retired or abandoned their re-elections will vote for Mrs. Pelosi’s scheme if they are adequately compensated. Leased not purchased. 

Train Wreck. 

Spoke to GOP source late in the evening off-air and learned that the Republican caucus was also in turmoil late in the evening. This upset was because of the dominant opinion of the group that it should not participate in the President’s bi-partisan summit on Thursday 25.

The leadership of John Boehner and Eric Cantor insist upon attending the TV show. Bohener has a list of what House members he is inviting along, but he wouldn’t share it this evening with his own caucus.

Alleyways of paranoia in the Halls of Congress.

The GOP members were decidedly opposed to attending a sham. The result was that the GOP knows it is a train wreck coming down the tracks and still will not step aside.