When Medicare was passed, it faced stiff opposition, despite a Democratic majority in the Senate. Senator Harry Byrd, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee (Max Baucus's equivalent) and representative Wilbur Mills (chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, getting bills out of committee was the challenge. LBJ was a president who knew how to pressure to get what he wanted through Congress, either through hardball threats or softball flattery/courting.
Are you seriously contending that Obama isn't capable?
And there weren't 70 Democrats in the Senate when Medicare passed, but that's neither here nor there, just as FDR faced his own opponents in getting populist policies enacted (with FDR, it was the Courts that blocked him). All presidents face impediments, but they innovate, not cave, to overcome them.
Of the options available to Obama, he chose to keep watering down legislation, making it Republican-like, despite the fact that Republicans made it clear before Obama got into the White House that they were going to obstruct Democrats at every turn. Isn't that the popular definition these days of 'insanity', Doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different outcome?
Harry Reid could have actually forced Republicans to filibuster instead of merely let them threaten it. The few times Reid called Republicans' bluff to filibuster (Jim Bunning and extending unemployment benefits), Republicans folded.
Democrats could have also changed the rules on supermajority, but they didn't.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
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