I’ve often noted that the conventional wisdom has a)short shelf-life b)many fathers when it proves to be correct c)deadbeat dads who insist it wasn’t theirs unless they are forced into a DNA test where paternity nails down their parenthood. One conventional wisdom that was prevalent in the new and old media was that after GOPer Scott Brown’s election health care reform was DOA — an irony laced with bitter irony since it had been the life’s passion dream of the deceased Democrat GOPer Brown was elected to replace.
However, the Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder, a superb reporter as well as a must-read blogger, in this post titled “Good luck with that,’ admits that his post-Brown-election assumption, stated with such certainty, proved wrong — and he spells out the series of events after Brown’s election that helped change decisions in the White House and among Democratic leaders on pressing for health care reform. Some of these events that also helped rally the Democrats.
Read it in full to see what they were. It involves GOP hubris and strategy overreach, the impact of Sen. Al Franken’s words, the insurance industry, Supreme Court, Sen. Evan Bayh — and more.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.