Hillarysworld

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Analysis: Dems' missteps led to health breakdown

Democrats say they never saw it coming, but the breakdown of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul was abetted by their own mistakes.

It wasn't just a political fluke brought on by the surprise election of a Republican senator in true-blue Massachusetts.

Looking back, Obama and his congressional allies failed to appreciate the depth of frustration with Washington — people's desire for health care legislation that would respond to their anxieties, not the clamor of interest groups.

Former President Bill Clinton was criticized for dictating to lawmakers when his health care plan imploded in the 1990s. But Obama may have swung too far in the opposite direction, giving free rein to Capitol Hill's culture of insider dealmaking.

Democrats bowed to ideology over pragmatism. They allowed a dispute within the party over a government insurance option pursued by liberals to drag on last year, even when it was clear the Senate wasn't going to pass it and Obama was unwilling to save it.

As Republicans closed ranks against the sweeping remake sought by Obama, Democrats lost more time last summer waiting to see if bipartisan talks in the Senate would produce a compromise bill.

But GOP negotiators came under relentless pressure from their own party, and the three-month exercise yielded nothing. Many Democrats felt it was an elaborate game of political rope-a-dope. Early on, Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., had captured the defiant mood among Republicans when he said health care would be Obama's Waterloo. "It will break him," he said.

Maybe not.

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