The Id is Winning

The Id is Winning

The Id is Winning

A mostly political weblog.
Oct. 1 2009 3:57 PM

The Id is Winning

Congress' ego says the time to finish the health bill is now. Congress' id still says "We don't want to get killed in 2010."

When the ego says 'yes,' politicians do dramatic things like cancel the Senate's scheduled Columbus Day recess. When id says 'no,' they slow down anyway. They oppose "arbitrary deadlines." 

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It looks like the id is winning. From The Hill :

Senior Obama lieutenants, including Vice President Joe Biden, Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag, have all said recently they think Congress can get a bill to the president before the end of the Thanksgiving break.

The comments suggest the White House is trying to light a fire under congressional negotiators, but it doesn’t appear to be working. [E.A.]

The way to change the Congressional id's inclination--to "light a fire"--was for Obama's speech to move the polls dramatically in the direction of public support, especially among likely voters (e.g., seniors). It didn't --at least it didn't enough. ... 12:08 P.M.

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How defensive is Marc Ambinder about the Atlantic 's pretentious, journalistically compromising** "First Draft of History" event? Yes, "[t]he company is making money off of this," he admits right off the bat. They are livestreaming it, to their credit, and you can listen to the "vital conversations" at the link above. ... It's going on right now!  ... ...  P.S.: Right now, Eric Cantor is saying nothing he hasn't said 100 times before and Chuck Todd is treading water. Not vital! I think I have to do some laundry. ... Update: Here are Thursday's breakout headlines ! "Blackstone's Pete Peterson worried about the deficit." ... 

**-- Atlantic is "making money" by staging a conference at which the presence of powerful officials like Larry Summers, David Axelrod, and John McCain, plus businessmen like Citigroup's Vikram Pandit, creates an aura of prestige (and access) sufficient to attract sponsorship from companies like Boeing and Allstate and ExxonMobil.  So are they really going to write something that pisses off Summers, Axelrod, McCain or Pandit so much that they don't come to the conference , or don't come to future conferences? At the very least they've engineered an obvious, gratuitous disincentive. ... Never mind pissing off Boeing and Allstate and ExxonMobil. ... 

Remember, this conference obviously did not spring up to fill the need for more Washington conferences. It sprang up to fill the need for the Atlantic to finally start making some money. ... 12:29 P.M.

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Fire Up the Id! Now this is exciting: Over at OMB, Peter Orszag will be posting his "daily step count" as part of the OMB Pedometer Challenge ! ... Finally they've figured out a way to make health care reform seem fun and appealing , as opposed to, say, a doomed, moralistic Carter-like attempt to get Americans to change their lifestyles in order to cut costs. ... [ Thanks to alert reader J .] 1:10 P.M.

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kf in August , E.J. today .

kf  Tuesday , Page Six today (Doris Kearns Goodwin style!)  ... 2:17 P.M.

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