APPETITE FOR SELF-DESTRUCTION

I hate to give Drudge credit for anything, but I can't blame him for posting this:



The longer this goes on, the more the mere fact that it has gone on for so long, with so many "endgames," undermines the potential for it to be seen as a success in the end for Democrats. In that way, the process of trying to get HCR passed is starting to remind me of the recording of Chinese Democracy, the 2008 album by Guns N' Roses, which took fourteen years to produce -- during which time many overly optimistic release dates were hinted at -- and which saw the light of day only after years of psychodrama. When it was finally released -- even though it good some good reviews -- it was a laughingstock in the rock world, as it had been for years when it existed only in rumor form. After all that time, and all those widely reported spats among musicians and producers, and all those aborted release plans, it couldn't not be a laughingstock.

Or maybe that's not true. Maybe, if Axl Rose had released some other material -- maybe a few other songs done as raw four-track demos, or done in live-in-the-studio first takes; you know, something that wasn't painstakingly produced, as Chinese Democracy was known to be long before it existed in final form -- maybe then the long-promised album wouldn't have been seen as a joke, and Axl Rose wouldn't be seen as a joke.

Same goes for HCR. If nothing else, the White House, had it set HCR aside temporarily to put the bulk of its energies behind, say, a real jobs bill or financial reform, might now actually be better able to persuade skeptics that the problem is GOP intransigence, not a reasonable refusal on the part of Republicans to sign on to a bad and unpopular bill. As it is, when the administration or congressional Democrats or liberal pundits or bloggers say, "Republicans just want to block everything we do," at least some of the public must be thinking, "What do you mean, 'everything'? All you've tried to do for a year is health care reform." But if Democrats had put other items on the front burner and watched them get blocked, then maybe they wouldn't have as much trouble persuading the public that the biggest problem in D.C. is across-the-board GOP intransigence.

At the very least, the president should stop saying he wants the bill finished by a date certain, unless he can make it happen. He's just compounding the embarrassment.