Obama gives former foe face, er, arm-twisting time
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President Obama on Monday flew to the Cleveland suburb of Strongsville, Ohio, to make his last big campaign-style pitch for healthcare overhaul. He brought with him the local congressman, Dennis Kucinich.
Helping transport a local official isn’t unusual for a president, especially Obama, who starts every speech with a string of shout-outs to local officials. But this trip gave Obama some face – read that arm-twisting -- time with a onetime rival who voted against the House’s first version of the bill because it wasn’t liberal enough.
Kucinich, once known as Dennis the Menace when he was elected Cleveland’s mayor, becoming one of the nation’s youngest municipal executives, only smiled at reporters when asked if he had spoken to the president about healthcare on Air Force One.
“I’m looking forward to hearing what he has to say,” Kucinich coyly said.
Needing every vote, the White House is hoping to woo liberals such as Kucinich using the ultimate argument that any victory is better than any defeat.
Democrats need 216 votes to pass the Senate’s version of healthcare and then pass a series of amendments to make the package more palatable to the House. The Senate would then need to pass the amendments using reconciliation, a procedure that requires only a simple majority instead of the 60 votes that Majority Leader Harry Reid wrung through his chamber at Christmas.
Kucinich favored a single-payer form of healthcare reform, and voted against the House bill because it was too conservative.
“By incurring only a new requirement to cover preexisting conditions, a weakened public option, and a few other important but limited concessions, the health insurance companies are getting quite a deal,” Kucinich said in explaining his ‘no’ vote in December.
-- Michael Muskal
