Barack Obama may have learned the wrong lesson. The president's strategy for overhauling American healthcare was supposed to be crafted with a keen eye to the deficiencies of the Clinton Administration's reform efforts in the early 1990s. Where the Clintons had micromanaged the contents of their colossal bill, Obama would lay out broad principles and let Congress do the detail work. Where the Clinton plan had withered on the vine after months of criticism, Obama's would move through Capitol Hill at a pace fast enough to prevent a critical mass of hostility from gathering. But Obama's ideological inclinations seem to have blinded him to an even greater lesson from the Clinton fiasco: don't abandon your moderates.
What the Obama team failed to realize about Clinton's setback was that details and deadlines were merely tactical setbacks rooted in a larger strategic deficiency: the failure to produce a reform package that would unite the Democratic majorities in Congress and attract some measure of Republican support. As a result, the White House is repeating Clinton's mistake of holding fast to a plan that unites the opposition while fracturing the majority. They are presently failing coalition-building 101. - Real Clear Politics Story
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