Obama Turns to Bloggers to Pass Health Care

With many Democrats becoming squeamish about attempts to pass a health care bill before the August recess, President Obama and his chief adviser, David Axelrod, hosted a conference call (audio here) Monday with several prominent liberal bloggers.

Their message was clear: Pressure nervous Democrats into passing something now.

Obama isn't up for reelection until 2012, but many Democrats have to face voters next year. As such, they are understandably nervous about passing such sweeping legislation -- which will likely involve increasing the deficit, as well as tax increases for some Americans -- without thoroughly reading and debating the bills.

The conference call included Ezra Klein of the Washington Post and Jonathan Singer of MyDD. The president reportedly spoke for less than five minutes, and then took questions for about 15 minutes.

As the liberal blog Daily Kos reported,

. . . the main message of the call was the urgency of getting this done sooner rather than later. In answer to John Amato's first question about the latest push for delays from Democrats and Republicans alike, President Obama answered that "we've been debating this for 50 years, that now's the time to make the tough decisions" with the options now on the table. In a followup question after President Obama left the call, Axelrod reiterated that message. This issue has been "talked to death for decades," and we've been "circling around the same issues" -- what matters now is getting it done. He added that if you needed a demonstration of the urgency of getting it done, it's that those who want to stop it are counting on delays that will give them enough time to kill it. He also suggested that those pushing for delays, be they arguing in good faith or not, listen to their constituents who call and e-mail every day with their insurance horror stories.

It appears these Netroots bloggers were receptive to the invitation to pressure Democrats. As Amato noted in his blog post about the call:

Stalling cannot be an option so I want to make the case that if Joe Lieberman wants more time to read the bill then he should stay at work doing so. Health care has been in the works for 65 years and Congress knows all there is to know about the process.

The call yielded several substantive points, including Obama's promise to veto a bill that did not include a public option.

Give the president credit for turning to bloggers to get his message out. While President Bush hosted prominent conservative columnists, I do not recall him ever hosting a conference call for conservative bloggers. Sen. John McCain, of course, hosted many such calls, and one can assume he would have continued to do so.