Dems Unclear on Strategy

Democrats struggled to break health-care reform out of limbo on Thursday as House and Senate leaders attempted to come together with a strategy to push the Democrats’ signature issue through the legislative process after Republican Scott Brown’s surprise win in Massachusetts on Tuesday. With neither legislative body keen to capitulate to the other—either by House Democrats voting through the Senate’s bill or by Senate Dems restarting on the legislation—Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid scrambled to keep progressive and moderate Democrats happy, absent a sign from the White House as to how to proceed. “We have to have it,” said West Virginia Democratic Senator Jay Rockefeller, adding that losing health reform “would just be awful.” The New York Times reports that one option is to seek bipartisan support for a scaled-back bill, but there still is little indication Republicans are interested in good-faith negotiations or that the Democrats' base would consider such a disappointing fallback to be true "health-care reform."