What does it say about THE GREAT ONE, Barack Hussein Obama, when even the MSM is making fun of HIM?

Mm, mmm, mm!?
Holy S**t?
or
Someting inside is now verking?

Capital Crunch: Obama Confronts Waning Political Capital

October 05, 2009 8:15 AM

ABC News’ Rick Klein reports:

Think the White House may want to work on its vote-counting operation before the health care bill makes it to the Senate floor?

Think the CBO might be just as brutal as the IOC — with scoring that counts just as much?

Think the public debate over Afghanistan strategy gets any easier as events shape perceptions?

Nobody will much remember a 24-hour trip to Denmark in early fall if, by the start of winter, there’s a health care bill in place and a Afghanistan policy everyone in the administration can agree to.

But whether President Obama’s focus turns abroad again or stays at home for a stretch, the president is confronting the limits of his political capital — from an Olympic loss, to the near-certain loss of a public option in a health care bill, and the end of streamlined decision-making on Afghanistan.

This is a time where the president needs to be spending his capital — in the halls of Congress, and on the world stage. But when he talks, who is listening? (And does the president lose options himself the longer he chooses to keep listening?)

Testing time: "A number of factors have combined to strip him of the camouflage that he once enjoyed when it comes to health-care policy,"David Broder writes in his Sunday Washington Post column. "His main leverage point is the realization among nearly all Democrats that nothing would be as costly to them, in their individual 2010 races, as the failure of this Congress, with its heavy Democratic majorities, to pass a substantive health-reform bill. That may be enough in the end for Obama to succeed. But the task of getting there will really test him — and expose his core values."

Thirteen months before the mid-term elections: "Obama is trying to prod Congress into passing legislation on health care overhaul, climate change, and financial services regulation by early next year, before election-year political pressures make it harder to persuade wary lawmakers to vote for the dramatic change Obama promised in his campaign," Susan Milligan reports in The Boston Globe. "He must also make difficult decisions on whether to increase troop strength and commit America to a larger, longer mission in Afghanistan. And the economy, while apparently on the road to recovery, is still not producing new jobs and continues to generate anxiety around the country."

Rep. Chris Van Hollen: "I do believe that if we are not successful in passing health care reform, it will make it much more difficult to enact other major initiatives," said Van Hollen, D-Md., the DCCC chairman.

(Ya think?)

The White House is using its Monday to re-set the focus of the debate on health care — again.

At 11:10 am ET in the Rose Garden, "the President will welcome doctors from across the country to an event in the Rose Garden, where he will deliver remarks on the need for health insurance reform this year." (They’re coming from every state, which means plenty of local-media pick-up.)

(And Organizing for America wants letters from doctors — and others — to make the case: "You don’t have to be a doctor or an expert to write an effective letter — you just have to have an opinion or a personal story to share. And these letters are short, usually just a paragraph or two, but they can have a huge impact because it shows your representatives and the media what local folks are thinking in the most public way possible.")

Yet even inside the Finance Committee — a still-uncertain fate? Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., remain on the fence — along with Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine.

"At least two Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee have refused to pledge support for the health-care reform bill scheduled for a vote this week, underscoring the hard work ahead for President Obama as he tries to enact the most ambitious domestic policy legislation in more than a generation," Ceci Connolly reports in The Washington Post."Committee defeat of the bill is an unlikely scenario, but one that highlights the power every Senate Democrat — and perhaps a few Republicans — holds going forward in a process that could stretch beyond Thanksgiving."

Might the public option live? "Senior administration officials have been holding private meetings almost daily at the Capitol with senior Democratic staff to discuss ways to include a version of the public plan in the healthcare bill that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) plans to bring to the Senate floor this month, according to senior Democratic congressional aides," the Los Angeles Times’ Noam N. Levey and Janet Hook report.

"It … marks a crucial test of Obama’s command of the inside game in Washington in which deals are struck behind closed doors and wavering lawmakers are cajoled a

it says "here come the d-bag trolls, who would rather have an on-his-deathbed mccain and who love to use obama’s middle name as some kind of insult, ranting about stuff of which they have very little true understanding".

looks will only get you so far….