I’ve gotten enough pushback on using “Obamacare” for the health care proposals that I’m changing this to the more cumbersome “health care reform,” but for me “Obamacare” is not about a top-down heavy-handed left-wing attempt to socialize our country, but instead simply the health care proposals that Obama is guiding as President. Having said that, Douthat’s new piece in the NYTimes makes a potent point about where the center of power lies in this debate:

“In reality, the health care wrestling match is less a test of Mr.
Obama’s political genius than it is a test of the Democratic Party’s
ability to govern….

If the Congressional Democrats can’t get a health care
package through, it won’t prove that President Obama is a sellout or an
incompetent. It will prove that Congress’s liberal leaders are lousy
tacticians, and that its centrist deal-makers are deal-makers first,
poll watchers second and loyal Democrats a distant third. And it will
prove that the Democratic Party is institutionally incapable of
delivering on its most significant promises.

You have to assume
that on some level Congress understands this — which is why you also
have to assume that some kind of legislation will eventually pass.

If it doesn’t, President Obama will have been defeated. But it’s the party, not the president, that will have failed.”