Alarmism is setting in about the health reform bill. "Alliances In Health Debate Splinter," says the Washington Post. "House healthcare plan to add to deficit: analysts," says Reuters, echoing earlier stories about Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf's congressional testimony last week that health reform would be a budget-buster. President Obama's approval ratings are slipping, and public approval of his handling of the health care issue has for the first time dropped below 50 percent. Slate warns readers on its home page, "We're About To Make a Huge Mistake on Health Care." Or maybe health reform is already dead because the Senate finance committee is dithering and six moderate senators are urging the Democratic leadership to slow things down further. Bill Kristol, who helped strangle Hillarycare in its crib, smells blood.

Never mind that the health reform bill last week cleared three congressional committees (two more to go!) and that the House bill, which is more liberal than the bill approved by Sen. Ted Kennedy's health, education, labor and pensions committee, was endorsed unexpectedly last week by the American Medical Association. While it would certainly be more convenient for health reform to clear Congress before the August recess, a failure to do so, which is looking increasingly likely, will hardly be the devastating setback that's widely supposed. The New Republic's Jonathan Cohn worries that the recess will provide "four long weeks in which special interests can bang away at legislation, running ads and ginning up grassroots opposition." But it will also provide four long weeks in which supporters of health care reform, whose numbers and union backing are not inconsiderable, can bang away at legislators who aren't supporting health reform.

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Minnesota's Supreme Court has dismissed former Sen. Norm Coleman's challenge to the state's November election results and declared Democratic challenger Al Franken the winner.

The court's unanimous, unsigned opinion declared that Franken "received the highest number of votes legally cast" and is entitled "to receive the certificate of election as United States senator from the state of Minnesota."

If the ruling brings an end to seven months of challenges by Coleman, Franken would become the 60th member of the Senate Democratic caucus, a move that gives the party a filibuster-proof majority in the chamber, at least on paper.

But on Wednesday, in his third primetime press conference, Obama moved beyond the defense of his actions to a confession of sorts. Doing so much at once, it turns out, is actually quite a chore. "The typical president, I think, has two or three big problems," he said, just hours after a flu pandemic was declared "imminent" by the World Health Organization. "We've got seven or eight big problems."

He went on. "I don't want to run auto companies, I don't want to run banks. I've got two wars I've got to run already. I've got more than enough to do," he said. "So the sooner we can get out of that business, the better off we're going to be."

A few minutes later, in response to another question, Obama returned to the same theme. "If you could tell me right now that, when I walked into this office that the banks were humming," he said, "that autos were selling, and that all you had to worry about was Iraq, Afghanistan, North Korea, getting health care passed, figuring out how to deal with energy independence, deal with Iran, and a pandemic flu, I would take that deal

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Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter will switch his party affiliation from Republican to Democrat and announced today that he will run in 2010 as a Democrat, according to a statement he released this morning.

Specter's decision would give Democrats a 60 seat filibuster proof majority in the Senate assuming Democrat Al Franken is eventually sworn in as the next senator from Minnesota. (Former senator Norm Coleman is appealing Franken's victory in the state Supreme Court.)

"I have decided to run for re-election in 2010 in the Democratic primary," said Specter in a statement. "I am ready, willing and anxious to take on all comers and have my candidacy for re-election determined in a general election."  read more »

Specter To Switch Parties

by Chris Cillizza

Washington Post