Obama (finally) open to health care reform by Democrats only

Finally. Some leadership emerges from the White House.

If Obama wants real health care reform, he can't count on Republicans. He can't rely on all the Democrats either, but at least Democrats seem to understand something has to be done. The Republicans just want to thwart Obama. Sounds like some people at the White House actually get that:

President Barack Obama may rely only on Democrats to push health-care legislation through the U.S. Congress if Republican opposition doesn’t yield soon, two of the president’s top advisers said.

“Ultimately, this is not about a process, it’s about results,” David Axelrod, Obama’s senior political strategist, said during an interview in his White House office. “If we’re going to get this thing done, obviously time is a-wasting.”

Both Axelrod and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said taking a partisan route to enacting major health-care legislation isn’t the president’s preferred choice. Yet in separate interviews, each man left that option open.

“We’d like to do it with the votes of members of both parties,” Axelrod said. “But the worst result would be to not get health-care reform done.”

The problems with the stimulus started when some genius on Team Obama leaked that they wanted to get 80 votes in the Senate. From there out, all Obama could do was compromise -- and the stimulus shrunk, thus shrinking the chances it would have the desired effect sooner rather than later. Republicans want Obama to fail. It's not just their leader, Rush, who thinks that. Most of them do.

Democrats were elected because they promised to solve problems, including health care. Do it already. But, do it right.