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The Washington Post ran an analysis piece the other day entitled, “Obama’s Struggle with Health-Care Reform Echoes Clintons’ Failure in 1994.”

That’s exactly the headline that—when they were mapping their strategy for health care reform a year ago—the Obama people hoped to avoid. They had studied carefully the Clintons’ health care disaster 16 years ago and patterned their political approach to prevent history from repeating itself.

Well, it seems history is repeating itself—but for opposite reasons.

I’ll note here for the record that a health care bill may still pass, but even the most optimistic supporter of reform would have admit it ain’t looking good right now.

The Post story is worth a read. It ticks off a list issues that have undermined health care reform: The bill took too long to pass, giving opponents amble time to kill it; the bill was too big and too complex, which made support hard to sustain; Americans want health care reform in a general sense, but often don’t like the specifics.

But there’s a piece missing from the Post analysis.

The Obama staff has talked publicly many times about their interpretation of why the Clintons’ plan failed. One main reason, they said, was because Clinton proposed one central bill that became one large target for opponents to repeatedly attack.

That lesson was one reason the Obama people went the opposite way: They never had their own plan, just broad outlines of what they wanted. They let Congress fill in the details. The idea was to prevent opponents from launching a hostile campaign against a single bill. Instead there was a set of competing House and Senate bills, similar in design, but which differed on some key points (like whether to include a public option). So, technically speaking, there was no such thing as Obamacare.

The irony is, in the end, the lack of a central proposal became a huge problem. Opponents of reform still attacked “Obamacare,” even if, in the strictest sense, there was no such thing.

And because there was no single proposal, Americans never had a good idea of what health care reform entailed and how it would impact their lives.

That remains true. If you ask 10 people on the street what exactly Obamacare does (expand Medicaid, use health insurance exchanges, provide subsidies for people to buy private insurance), I would bet very few could tell you the details or if the plan would help them.

Since there was no one plan, no one—Obama included—ever sold reform to Americans. Where was the presidential barnstorming tour for health care? Why didn’t Obama spend a month visiting every state, speaking in front of backdrops that read “health care now!” and holding town-hall meetings to explain the plan, to talk to people with health care horror stories and to make the case for reform? President Bush was a master at that kind of campaign

I suspect it was the lack of a single plan that prevented from Obama using the bully pulpit effectively. Right up until the House and Senate passed their bills, it wasn’t clear what health care reform really was—would there be a public option? How much would the subsidies be? Would Cadillac plans be taxed?—and Obama seemed reticent to endorse any particular policy.

If no health care bill passes, we’ll probably look back on this diffuse approach as a huge mistake.

Obama may have learned the lesson of 1994, but he could very well end up with the same miserable result.

I’m not surprised anymore when I read a news report that Boeing Co.’s “virtual fence” is behind schedule and experiencing “technical glitches.”

Originally, we were told the virtual fence would be finished along the southern border by 2011. It’s now been pushed back to 2014 because of technical glitches.

The Associated Press reports today that Washington has spent $672 million on the “virtual fence” which consists of cameras, ground sensors and radar, along the southern border.

The worst part is the radar can’t “distinguish between vegetation and people when its is windy” according to the article. This is just about every day, at least along the Texas-Mexico border. Also by the time the camera operator picks up the satellite image of whatever object appears suspicious the object is already gone.

Boeing is blaming the technical issues on the government’s misguided belief back in 2005 (when they started this boondoggle)  that the fence could be put together easily with off-the-shelf components. Five years later and $672 million later they are still trying to cobble something together that works.

My guess is if the government fires Boeing at this point they will take their proprietary equipment with them and D.C. will have to start all over again.

Sounds like Boeing has a pretty good stimulus package.

With Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison continuing to founder, we appear to be witnessing one of the most spectacular political implosions in Texas history. It’s hard to fathom now, but last February, one widely circulated poll showed Hutchison leading Gov. Rick Perry 56 percent to 31 percent among likely Republican voters.

That’s damn near 2-to-1. Yesterday, Rasmussen’s latest numbers showed that the senator’s support had been cut nearly in half from that high point a year ago. After her second anemic debate performance, she’s down to 29 percent, with Perry holding steady at 44 percent and Debra Medina registering 16 percent — a 12-point climb from December, thanks mostly to the libertarian’s sharp turns in the two televised debates.

And get a load of this, people: Perry leads Hutchison by five points among likely Republican women voters. What was inconceivable three weeks ago is now in the realm of possibility: Not only could Medina, a lightly funded candidate running her first race against two money-drenched warhorses, force a runoff by denying Perry 50 percent on March 2—she could be the second-place finisher.

If Medina captures just half of the undecided folks in this poll—11 percent said they hadn’t made up their minds—and continues to gather momentum while Hutchison fades, the gap could be closed in a month. Funnier things have happened, especially in volatile political times like this.

Just since Rasmussen’s latest poll, on Jan. 18, Hutchison has slid by four points while Medina picked up four. Another five-point change both ways would bring them even. A growing number of Republicans are clearly beginning to view Medina, not Hutchison, as the best alternative to the perma-governor.

As Rasmussen notes, “Medina is much more competitive when those with strong opinions are considered.” Twenty-four percent of Republicans said they had a “very favorable” opinion of Perry, 18 percent of Hutchison and 16 percent of Medina. One thing’s easy enough to predict: Medina’s voters will turn out with all the force they can muster. They have something to vote for—something pretty darn radical, it’s true, but there’s no denying that Medina is crystal-clear on where she stands and what kind of change she’d try to make as governor.

Hutchison, meanwhile, has given her natural base—more moderate Republicans—no reason to get their butts off the couch and vote. She continues to play on Perry’s (and now Medina’s) political field, trying to pick off conservative voters by talking up a gimmicky “Property Bill of Rights,” assailing the dead Trans-Texas Corridor, and claiming that she—personally—quadrupled the number of Border Patrol agents. (Apparently senators are more powerful than we knew!)

Funny: When Hutchison said she couldn’t resign her Senate seat because it was her duty to stay in Washington and defeat health-care reform and cap-and-trade, she was staking a claim to be a serious powerhouse on Capitol Hill. It was going to be Hutchison vs. Obama, the senator implied. If she came back to run full-time for governor, we’d soon be sliding down that slippery slope to socialism. She had to save America!

Hutchison was, of course, laughably overstating her influence in the Senate. But how much power is she going to wield after she’s embarrassed herself with a sub-30-percent showing against Rick Perry, who’s never been especially popular, and this unknown character named Debra Medina?

Somehow, I don’t think President Obama will be quaking in his wingtips when Sen. Hutchison limps back to Washington.

If you’re going to publicly attack the president, it helps to get your facts straight.

Late last week, Texas Congressman Jeb Hensarling ran down President Obama for ballooning the federal deficit.

The dispute began when Obama showed up at a GOP congressional retreat in Baltimore last week for an extended give-and-take. In a rambling question to the president, Hensarling acknowledged that Republicans had run up large deficits when they were in charge, but he claimed, as the Hill newspaper put it, “yearly deficits Democrats complained about under George W. Bush had now become ‘monthly’ deficits” under Obama. In other words, he contended Obama had multiplied the deficit by a factor of 12.

Here was Obama’s response: “That’s factually just not true. And you know it’s not true.”

I recommend you watch the entire video of the exchange here.

Later, Hensarling sent out a press release that altered his numbers a little. Citing Congressional Budget Office figures, Hensarling now says Obama is equaling the annual Bush deficit every fiscal quarter. In other words, Obama has quadrupled the annual deficit.

So who’s right?

I’ve noticed a shift in the last week among comprehensive immigration reform advocates from hopeful to downright angry and dejected. The growing sentiment is: don’t expect the Obama Administration to fix our broken immigration system anytime soon. 2010 is a pipe dream, my friends. The coup de grace was President Obama’s 71-minute State of the Union last week which included just seven words on our busted immigration system. It was a lackluster acknowledgement of a festering problem.  “We should continue the work of fixing our broken immigration system,” Obama said, “and ensure that everyone who plays by the rules can contribute to our economy and enrich our nation.”No timelines. No promises. With health care reform left dangling in the wind and a populist tea-party brewing this election season, the pols are not inclined to touch this political third-rail anytime soon.This is a shame. Because the debate around illegal immigration continues to grow nasty, if not downright ugly. And it needs to be addressed before things get worse. You have only to look at Arizona to see how truly poisonous the immigration debate can be. Residents there are in a pitched battle — either for or against — Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s campaign of fear complete with checkpoints and immigrant round ups. An Arizona senate committee approved a bill recently that would make these Arpaio-type tactics kosher in the rest of the state. The legislation would make residency checks mandatory, and it would allow any person to sue an official or agency that provides sanctuary to an undocumented immigrant.  Meanwhile, temporary detention centers have become jails. Immigrants awaiting deportation or simply to have their immigration cases heard in court are detained for months or even years while they wait for their immigration cases to be resolved. Immigrant detainees abandoned in far flung detention centers without legal representation are resorting to hunger strikes just to get their day in court.

A NPR report Tuesday said that 380,000 immigrants are being held across the nation in these detention centers, i.e. jails.  Homeland Security has already identified 100,000 immigrants that could be released from these jails and could be monitored with ankle bracelets or through other methods. The catch is they need Congress to pass a bill to authorize them to do it.

Republicans and some conservative Democrats continue to shout for more detention centers, higher walls and no amnesty. How do they envision sending the estimated 12 million people back to their native countries? Many of these folks have been here for generations and have deep ties in their communities and children who are U.S. citizens.Immigration reform advocates thought they could count on the Democratic Party. Democratic Senator Charles Schumer from New York who has taken the lead in drafting immigration legislation in the Senate is casting about for any Republican backing he can find. Like Obama, he’s not setting any deadlines either. Schumer recently met with Lou Dobbs, which signals that comprehensive reform may be decidely less comprehensive than we would hope. In the meantime, with the sour mood in the country over the economy and the mind-numbing deficit people are casting about for a convenient scapegoat. Undocumented immigrants are blamed for everything from the collapse of our healtcare system to the shortage of affordable daycare (I actually saw this in a comment yesterday).

It’s time for Democrats and Republicans to put aside the campaign talking points and find some common ground on this difficult issue.