You Can Thank Dear Leader For That State Of Affairs, You Twit...

Washington Monthly is tough sledding these days. While I almost never agreed with Kevin Drum on issues of policy, he was at least not given to gratuitous stupidity. Not so with Steve Benen:

Six centrists and conservatives from small rural states get together in secret to hammer out an agreement that ignores the majority's policy priorities. The negotiations include exactly zero of the Finance Committee's progressive members, but include one of the Senate's most conservative members and another Republican who doesn't want to admit negotiations are even happening. Why, with a Democratic president, and large Democratic majorities in both chambers, would the final bill reflect the wishes demands of these six?

Now here's the stupid part:

Because Mike Ross intends to help make it happen.

For those of you who don't know, Mike Ross is a leader of the Blue Dog Democrats in the House. Here's why Benen is being gratuitously stupid:

This has nothing to do with Mike Ross or the Blue Dogs. Nothing.

The only reason people like Max Baucus and Kent Conrad are now in charge of health care reforn, or health insurance reform - or whatever the fuck Barack Obama is calling it today - is because Barack Obama willingly ceded the initiative to write the legislation and present it to Congress. If Obama didn't understand that he was dropping reform in the lap of the Senate Finance Committee, and people like Baucus and Conrad, it is only because he didn't do his homework. Shame on him, then.

The present state of affairs are the direct consequence of choices Barack Obama made months ago. He and the rest of the super geniuses decided they were going to avoid a Clinton-style healthcare debacle by "guiding" Congress in the writing of the House and Senate bills rather than presenting something themselves. And it's worth noting that it seems to have never occurred to the super geniuses that in turning over reform to others, they were putting themselves in a position where they just might end up having to follow, rather than lead.

Everybody gets what they want. When things don't work out, it's usually because people aren't careful about what they are asking for. So it is with Barack Obama. He wanted to avoid attracting the sort of political heat the Clinton White House took for its role in crafting Hillarycare by shifting the political risks to Congress. Well, Obama got what he wanted. Congress took the hit. What he overlooked was this:

 It was his Congress.