Pollsters Doug Schoen and Pat Caddell have a Washington Post op-ed urging the Democrats to abandon health care reform out of their own self-interest:

I’ve written myself about the Obama administration’s more-than-flatfooted policies on Syria (here, here, and here) and Iran (

One casino has betting odds of various figures winning the 2012 presidential election. Hillary Clinton seems strangely high at 10-1 -- that line might be bait for those who still attribute supernatural powers to the Clintons. Sarah Palin is also 10-1, which I find plausible but uncomfortably high for a potentially cataclysmic event.

Dick Cheney is very low, at 150-1, below Ron Paul (50-1), John Edwards (65-1) and even the Constitutionally ineligible Arnold Schwarzenegger (100-1.)

That would make one less “special envoy” in the president’s service, which couldn’t be bad.

According to Jack Khoury in Ha’aretz, the information came from “an Arab political source,” unidentified but published in Hadith a-Nass, a Nazareth-based daily (responsible, I’m told).

Say what you want about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but “he knows how to work a room.” So claims Flynt Leverett, the contrarian Iran analyst who, with his wife Hillary Mann Leverett, paid a visit to the Iranian president in New York City last fall. During the sit-down at Manhattan’s InterContinental Barclay hotel with a group of invited academics, foreign policy professionals, and other Iranophiles, the Leveretts marveled at Ahmadinejad’s attention to detail as the Iranian took copious notes and strove to pronounce their unfamiliar names correctly.

Last week, I left the Obama administration to join the Center for American Progress. Policy—constructing it, selling it—has been my career, as an advisor for the president and Hillary Clinton. The New Republic has asked me to use this experience to help illuminate the glorious (and occasionally unattractive) process of policymaking, how wonks and politicians think about the hard work of governing. Herewith, my first installment.

Ever since President Barack Obama announced he'd be having a bipartisan meeting to talk about health care reform, Republicans have been denouncing it as a charade. He's not really interested in their ideas, they say. And he doesn't really want their support.

But is the problem that Obama won't listen to the Republicans--or that the Republicans won't listen to Obama?

Continuing my last Spine…

Neera Tanden, one of the Obama administration's top health care reform advisers, is leaving to become chief operating officer at the Center for American Progress (CAP), the liberal Washington think-tank with close ties to the Democratic establishment.

The most effective Republican arguments about health care reform lately have been about procedure, not policy. Over and over again, Republicans have accused Democrats of making shady backroom deals, of twisting the legislative process, and of trying to foist a secret plan on the country. From the looks of things, the attacks are working.

Let’s face it. America’s foreign policy is hardly healthier than its economy. Of course, jobs and taxes still dominate the politics of the day. Republicans will likely be running election campaigns on those matters. But, as foreign policy comes into focus more and more, Democrats may seek refuge from Barack Obama’s grand strategy and its consequences--or lack thereof. For, right now, Obama’s frustrated foreign policy is little more than aimlessness.

WASHINGTON -- When word went out that Bill Clinton had been rushed to the hospital, the prospect that he was in danger made me wish that President Obama had spent more time learning lessons that only Clinton can teach.

Yes, Clinton put his presidency at risk over a sex scandal, and his infuriating moments around the 2008 South Carolina primary disheartened even his most loyal supporters.

As President Obama begins a push to impose harsher economic sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program, his success will be determined largely by the answer to a single question: Will China and Russia get on board? In order to bite, sanctions must be enforced by the rest of the international community, but, so far, Beijing and Moscow have been reluctant to endorse the toughest penalties advocated by Washington.

Jon Chait reads far too much into my analysis of Obama’s weakness with white working class voters. He mistakes a special for a general theory of the Obama presidency.

One of the most welcome things about last night’s State of the Union was its treatment of history: how it unfolds and, specifically, what propels it forward. Obama began his speech with an admonishment that nothing in history is inevitable: “It’s tempting to look back on these moments and assume that our progress was inevitable--that America was always destined to succeed.

On July 2 of last year, Politico broke a startling story: The Washington Post was planning to host off-the-record salons at which sponsors would pay to mingle with D.C. eminences and Post writers. The dinners--the first of which had been advertised in Post fliers as an “exclusive opportunity to participate in the health-care reform debate among the select few who will actually get it done”--were to take place at the home of Katharine Weymouth, the Post’s publisher.

Today, it was Hillary Clinton who paid the sympathy call to Haiti, or actually to Haiti's president, René Préval. The secretary of state said she would stay at the airport only for a few hours in order not to be a burden in the city, where she uttered the usual platitudes. But the arrival of her airplane was clearly just another intrusion on the desperate work going on, since the Federal Aviation Authority, which is administering the field, had already been closed to inbound flights.

Some 40-odd years ago, Chuck Schumer was my student. A few years after that, I became his student. No, not in a formal classroom sense, but in the political dimension. If you watch him, you learn a lot. He's a stand-up liberal, a New York liberal at that. But he is also an effective liberal, which means he sometimes compromises--a sin on the Upper West Side, where politics often means that you shouldn't compromise ... ever.

WASHINGTON -- A politically shrewd Senate Democratic staff member chatting about the future of health care negotiations stopped in midsentence late Tuesday afternoon as news flashed across his computer screen. "My God," he said. "Byron Dorgan is retiring."

At the risk of seeing his blogging upstaged, Jon has graciously agreed to accept occasional guest posts from former contributors to the now-defunct Plank. The blogging instinct doesn't die overnight, after all (and nearly any blogger welcomes some added content).

BIGGEST TACTICAL BLUNDER: Pushing the Israeli-Arab peace process too hard. Obama took office looking for bold strokes at a time when peace seemed as far away as ever: Israel had just finished its punishing military campaign in Gaza last winter, and the Arab world was inflamed, and deeply uninterested in making offerings to Israel. Obama's squeeze on Israeli settlements, meanwhile, managed to a) tick off a backlash in Israel that enabled the Netanyahu government to stand its ground, without b) shaking loose meaningful Arab support.

Harold Pollack is a professor at the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration and Special Correspondent for The Treatment.

As we enter health reform’s final lap, critical details remain uncertain. Blue dogs and progressives must both be appeased. Critical financing issues must be resolved. House and Senate bills must be reconciled. Lots could still go wrong, but it seems likely that a 2,000 page behemoth will be thwonked onto the President’s desk. However President Obama manages the endgame to reach that point, he should roll that grand presidential desk onto Air Force One and fly it to Hope, Arkansas where he should sign that final bill.

Some of my fellow early Obama supporters may be appalled at my last sentence. You may remember the Democrats' tough nomination fight. I certainly do. I supported Barack Obama from the beginning because I was done with Bill Clinton after his lapses of personal integrity cost the nation so dearly. I was furious with both Clintons at various points in the 2008 campaign. Politics is a tough business. It could hardly be otherwise.

These disputes provide all the more reason to bring Democrats together for what promises to be a genuine historic achievement. Fifteen years ago, the Clintons took a big gamble that they could send a big package to Congress and get the thing passed. They lost, but their effort was more substantive, skillful, and worthy than is commonly remembered.

Jews usually go out to the movies on Christmas ... and then they go out to eat "Chinese." I've spent it writing. Below is my harvest. I wish you all good cheer.

Here are the motifs of my writing day. Alas, none of them cheery.

1. THE REAL GRIM REAPER: HOLY DAY VICTIMS IN IRAQ AND PAKISTAN

2. COLD COMMON SENSE ABOUT IRAN FROM, MIRABILI DICTU, "THE NEW YORK TIMES"

3. A WISE EUROPEAN FOREIGN MINISTER: "WE SHOULD SHUT UP ABOUT THE MIDDLE EAST"

4. A SOBER "TIMES" PIECE ON ISRAELI MILITARY DOCTRINE

5. THE SON OF THE MAN WHO WAS KILLED BY TERRORISTS IN THE WEST BANK: "REVENGE IS NOT FOR JEWS"

6. THE PRESIDENT AND ONE DUMB JEWISH WOMAN, THE ANTI-ANTI-SEMITISM CZARINA IN WASHINGTON

7. COPENHAGEN AND THE UNSEATING OF AMERICA AS A GREAT POWER

8. THE CHRISTMAS TERRORIST 

So here goes:

1. THE REAL GRIM REAPER: HOLY DAY VICTIMS IN IRAQ AND PAKISTAN

Apparently I found Newsweek's interview with Henry Kissinger and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton more interesting than Isaac did. Clinton makes what I think are a couple of interesting observations,  including this one, about diplomacy in the modern world:

It is bad enough that Newsweek and Slate decided to run a long joint interview of Henry Kissinger and Hillary Clinton.