But rather than dooming the effort, Brown’s win appears to have helped Democrats refocus the legislation and their strategy for selling it. Once on track to produce a bill that Republicans were prepared to depict as partisan and laden with special-interest perks, Democrats now expect to unveil legislation that costs less and more aggressively tackles health-care inflation — a package they say could leave them less vulnerable in November. It drops the “Cornhusker Kickback” that so infuriated voters, and includes a few Republican ideas tacked on by President Obama.
“There’s no government takeover of health care; there’s an expansion of the private market, subsidies, more choice — I mean, it’s so much of what many of us had hoped for from the very beginning,” said Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), a moderate and reluctant supporter of the original Senate bill…
The loss also forced Obama to engage more forcefully to save his top domestic policy goal by assuming the role of chief negotiator, which many Democrats had urged him to take on months ago. He has offered his own plan, in broad strokes, and convened a televised seven-hour summit in which he addressed major GOP criticisms. Both moves were key to restoring momentum, congressional Democrats said.
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