Sampling The Sausage

by Patrick Appel

Ambinder does his best to pinpoint where the healthcare debate is currently:

[T]he Democrats are still much more trusted as a party to fix health care (in the generic sense) than Republicans are. The public buys in to the urgency of the problem, even as they're not officially sold on any solution. What's now known in liberal circles as the "DeMint/Kristol" strategy is an instinctual Republican strategy derived from the gut; it misreads the public's ambivalence about Obama and the health care debate as a sign that the public has soured on health care reform in general (nope) or Democratic principles in particular (not really). It may well have the perverse effect of generating sympathy among independents for Obama. Independents want to get health care done; they respect Obama for trying, even as they've begun to sour on his leadership skills.