http://www.bloomberg.com/...
I know, I know. Another news byte to hang our hats on. This one saved for the Friday night news dump.
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President Barack Obama is likely next month to end Democratic efforts to work with Republicans on health-care legislation and push for a party-line vote if the stalemate in the U.S. Senate persists, a person close to the White House said.
The president and his advisers have begun devising a legislative strategy to pass a measure by relying only on the Democratic majority in each house of Congress, said the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Bloomberg is juxtaposing their headline with an interview with Tom Daschle, whom Obama met late this afternoon.
In a separate interview, former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle said Obama is losing patience with negotiations between three Democrats and three Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee, the only congressional panel seeking a bipartisan consensus on a plan to remake the nation’s health-care system.
"He’s waited and waited," Daschle said today after meeting with the president. "He has indicated, much to the chagrin of people in his party, that virtually everything’s on the table," Daschle said. "And he’s gotten almost nothing in return for it."
Given the way the right wing demonized Daschle in the 1990's, and the fact that Obama had to abandon him as his first choice to lead on this issue, there is a certain poetic symmetry going on here that may make this latest trial balloon a little weightier. Obama clearly respects Daschle and having him "break the news" may be a way of adding a degree of emphasis.
Obama is heading out for vacation. Daschle seems like an apt choice (as opposed to Sebelius) given his history with the right-wing noise machine, to handle the task of breaking the sad news to the GOP and selling it to an American public that's been sold a bill of goods with this "Bipartisanship" nonsense for far too long.