U.S. President Barack Obama approaches the podium in the Executive Office Building on the White House campus in Washington.Charles Dharapak
Bloodied but unbowed by angry and frustrated voters, U.S. President Barack Obama is sticking to the goal of sweeping heath-care reform, but he won't try to ram it through Congress.
On the anniversary of his historic inauguration - when nearly two million people thronged the National Mall in an emotional testament to his promise of hope and change - Mr. Obama sounded uncharacteristically chastened in the wake of the voter revolt in left-leaning Massachusetts.
"The people of Massachusetts spoke," Mr. Obama said yesterday as the political shock waves rocked Washington.
The election of Republican Scott Brown in Massachusetts stripped Mr. Obama of the 60-seat Senate supermajority that allowed Democrats to stymie Republican opposition by closing off debate. The result left the President's proudest first-year achievement - proposed reforms that would force Americans to buy private insurance coverage but provide no public option - stalled and possibly doomed.
Some Republicans and Democrats voiced hope that a scaled-back health-care bill, one capable of winning bipartisan support, could be revived. But others, including key moderate Republican senators whose support is now even more crucial, were skeptical of revisions and suggested starting over.
"I never say anything is dead, but I think that clearly they're going to have to revisit the entire issue," said Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine, one of only two Republicans who backed an early version of heath-care reform.
No one is offering a road map that would strip down the two existing versions of the health-care legislation - one in the House, the other in the Senate -in such a way as to win Republican support without having the Democrats withdraw theirs.
In recognition of the new political reality, Mr. Obama said Democrats "shouldn't try to jam anything through" on health care. He admitted that Americans - weighed down by a sluggish economy and high unemployment, are fed up - but tried to blame his predecessor rather than his own performance during his first year in office.
"People are angry and they are frustrated. Not just because of what's happened in the last year or two years, but what's happened over the last eight years," Mr. Obama said.
Few Democrats found solace in that assessment.
With mid-term elections looming and the President's ambitious agenda - on health care, carbon emissions, immigration and escalating the Afghan war - all potent political issues, the prospect of angry independent voters sweeping aside scores of vulnerable Democrats suddenly seized the Capitol's lawmakers.
"If there's anybody in this building that doesn't tell you they are more worried about elections today, you should absolutely slap them," said Senator Claire McCaskill, a Democrat from the bellwether state of Missouri.
Coming on the heels of November's election of a Republican governor in usually Democratic New Jersey, the Massachusetts shocker left Republicans exultant. "You just witnessed a wicked political pivot across our country," said Sarah Palin, standard-bearer for the conservative bedrock. "This is a tidal wave that's sweeping the country that's telling politicians in D.C. the status quo is not acceptable."
The loss of the filibuster-proof Senate majority and the skittishness of Democrats facing tough re-election fights may force Mr. Obama to practise some of the bipartisan politics he promised during his own election campaign.
"The President ought to take this as a message to recalibrate how he wants to govern, and if he wants to govern from the middle we'll meet him there," said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
Mr. Obama's first big chance to recast his presidency will come in next week's State of the Union address. Yesterday, White House officials said the President has taken on the message of widespread voter anger and suggested he will shift focus.
"You're not going to see the President pound on a desk for the sake of political theatre," said White House spokesman Robert Gibbs. "What is more important than anything is understanding the frustration out in America that the President has seen and having that frustration and anger guide policies that will get the middle class back up."