"You Are Terrifying Us"
By Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal
We have entered uncharted territory in the fight over national health care.
There's a new tone in the debate, and it's ugly. At the moment the Democrats are looking like something they haven't looked like in years, and that is: desperate. They must know at this point they should not have pushed a national health-care plan. A Democratic operative the other day called it "Hillary's revenge."
When Mrs. Clinton started losing to Barack Obama in the primaries 18 months ago, she began to give new and sharper emphasis to her health-care plan. Mr. Obama responded by talking about his health-care vision. He won.
Now he would push what he had been forced to highlight: Health care would be a priority initiative. The net result is falling support for his leadership on the issue, falling personal polls, and the angry town-hall meetings that have electrified YouTube.
In his first five months in office, Mr. Obama had racked up big wins--the stimulus, children's health insurance, House approval of cap-and-trade. But he stayed too long at the hot table.
All the Democrats in Washington did. They overinterpreted the meaning of the 2008 election, and didn't fully take into account how the great recession changed the national mood and atmosphere.
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