Well, I got over my irrational pique and put back the Obama health care button. After a couple of days I still think the administration is honestly seeking comprehensive health care reform, even though its representatives are starting to speak of health insurance reform instead.

I’m also thinking the explanation for my various disappointments with the Obama administration is its constant effort to recruit Republican support in the name of bipartisanship. Harold Meyerson has a good piece in today’s Washington Post about why such bipartisanship is impossible and mentions some signs that the administration may be changing course. I hope so.

But it isn’t just Republicans who are poisoning the well with respect to health care. The so-called gang of six, including allegedly moderate Republicans, Charles Grassley, Olympia Snowe, and Mike Enzi also includes three Democrats, Max Baucus, Jeff Bingham, and Kent Conrad. Under the guise of seeking a bipartisan compromise, these senators, all of whom have received substantial contributions from the medical-industrial complex, seem actually seeking to prevent whatever legislation passes the Senate from containing provision for any public program or any employer mandate.

I do not believe that Baucus and Grassley are negotiating in good faith. Grassley is presently waging a reelection campaign that is filled with demagoguery aimed at the right of the right in Iowa, as witness his recent support of the Palin death-panel canard and his performance in recent town hall meetings. Baucus has received substantial contributions from the medical-industrial complex since 2005. Indeed, all gang-of-six members seem inclined at present to delay or scale back health care reform, and some are maintaining that public support for reform has eroded.

In Iowa, where only recently a majority supported reform, Senator Grassley, who claims to be listening to his constituents, is now claiming that “Iowans are more interested in making sure that Congress does not mess up what they already have.” I don’t believe him. Nor do I think public support for reform has eroded. I think rather that the weaker part of that support has now to contend with people’s fears about the economy in the wake of plummeting home values and shrinking or disappearing retirement savings. I also think sabotage of town hall meetings by activists and fringe groups has worked to the extent that it has created confusion that plays into the hands of Republican recalcitrance.

There are three alternatives, it seems to me, that the administration will ponder as it seeks a way out the morass: 1) scaling back reform in hopes of winning some Republican support, though I frankly don’t think this is meaningfully possible beyond two or three votes–Grassley will find a way to vote with the majority of Republicans who are demagoguing health care reform in hopes of bringing the President down; 2) forcing comprehensive reform through the Senate with the 51 votes necessary for reconciliation; or 3) allowing the Republicans to kill reform with a filibuster in the Senate and running against that in the elections of 2010. James Carville has proposed the third alternative–it might not be a bad idea.

What my guy stands to lose if he continues to court specious bipartisanship is any resemblance to the heroic young man who waged a remarkable campaign for office only a few short months ago. He will be perceived as just another politician.

—It’s a big thing to lose.