Changing the Narrative

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The push to get a health care reform bill through the U.S. House over the weekend was a classic political maneuver called "changing the narrative."

It worked.

Last week was a really, REALLY, bad news week for the Obama Administration. There was so much bad news that one story cascaded over another and, ultimately, they cancelled each other out.

The elections last Tuesday were a disaster for the Obama Administration. The White House wrote off the poor Democrat in Virginia pretty early, but Obama campaigned for Jon Corzine, the incumbent Democratic Governor of New Jersey pretty hard.

The losses in New Jersey and Virginia may not have been a foreshadowing of what will happen a year from now, but they certainly represented a foreshadowing of what may happen a year from now.

Thursday, a Major in the Army Medical Corps who apparently didn't want to go to the Middle East later this month, killed 13 people and wounded 29 at Fort Hood in Texas. In addition to the horror of the event itself, it reminded us of the danger facing service members who are already deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan while the President continues to have difficulty settling on a new strategy.

On Friday morning, news which has the capacity to be the most damaging to the White House: The job numbers for October were released showing the unemployment rate had soared from 9.8 percent in September all the way up to 10.2 percent.

At ten percent just about everyone knows someone - or of someone - who has lost his or her job.

Not only that, but while 15.7 million Americans who want a job, can't find full-time work the financial news outlets are full of stories about how Warren Buffet is making billions of dollars. Goldman Sachs is making billions of dollars. The insiders playing the stock markets are making billions of dollars. But the unemployment is at 10.2 percent and shows no signs of shrinking anytime soon.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, since December 2007, 8.2 million jobs have been lost. Kind of makes the Obama Administration's claim of "creating or saving 640,000 jobs" rings just a little hollow, doesn't it?

So hollow, in fact, that in the city of Buffalo, New York this was the lead graf in the "saved or created" story by the Buffalo News:

The mammoth economic stimulus bill that passed early this year created or saved just 231 jobs in the Buffalo metro area as of the end of September, a Buffalo News analysis of federal reports shows.

For those of you who are wondering, I looked it up for you. Buffalo's population is about 271,000.

The decision to press for a Saturday vote on health care was formulated as soon as the Obama Administration realized how bad the job numbers were going to be. When the election results came in Tuesday night, that made the need to change the narrative even more important. After the Fort Hood horror, it became imperative.

Among those voting for the health care bill was the new Congressman from NY-23, Bill Owens, who had said during the campaign that he was opposed to the public option.

Here's an abridged version of the conversation which went on between majority leader Steny Hoyer and Owens as he was about to be sworn in:

Welcome to Washington, Bill. Here are your two futures: Vote for the Speaker's legislation and we'll do everything we can to get you committee assignments which will help you in your district.

Vote against it and your committee assignment will be the Committee on the District of Columbia with a seat on the Sewage & Sanitation subcommittee.

See how this works?

No matter how much the popular press pretends that the vote shows real momentum for a major overhaul of the nation's health care system, it was approved with a two-vote margin which does not sound like a choo-choo train racing across the Capitol Rotunda toward the Senate Chamber.

The narrative may have changed for now, but the problems facing the Obama Administration continue to grow.

On the Secret Decoder Ring page today: Links to the Bureau of Labor Statistics release of the job numbers on Friday and the Buffalo News story. Also, a Mullfoto from the baseball game in Philadelphia last week. There is no Catchy Caption of the day, but there is a very moving 45-second film clip from San Antonio I urge you to take a look at.