Let's play Count the Clichés! Today's subject is Democratic strategist Bruce Reed, who writes in Slate that "[h]ealth care reform remains a good bet."
Why? Well, because (a) Ezra Klein says so, and (b) "virtually all Democrats in Congress want to get health care reform done." If only it were that easy.
The real reason to read the post, however, is to try to spot all the clichés, partisan boilerplate, silly phrasing, and mixed metaphors contained therein. Here are the ones I found. If you spot some more, send them in!
(1) "Recess is war by other means."
(2) "As grass-roots armies have marched into battle at town meetings and shopping malls across the country, fake troops sometimes get in the way of real ones."
(3) "Health care has always been the Middle East of domestic policy, and after the lulling calm of six months of relative ceasefire, all this renewed fighting has left some proponents a little shell-shocked."
(4) "If health reform were a baseball team, it would be the Chicago Cubs-coming up short so many times that even its most devoted fans assume every bad bounce is the beginning of another season-ending swoon."
(5) "[T]he political hay-making in town halls and the legislative sausage-making that preceded it obscure a deeper consensus."
(6) "Down the stretch, Democrats still need to close the deal on health care-and the president was right to hit the stump and recognize that the cacophony in Congress can't win the debate for him." (This one is my personal favorite.)
(7) "Obama's strategy has been not to draw lines in the sand or make the perfect the enemy of the good."
(8) "Health care reform will survive the recess to end all recesses-and in a long war that has claimed as many casualties as health care, that's a victory in itself."
For what it's worth, I'm increasingly in agreement with Rich Lowry, who writes today that "[i]t's not inconceivable that the entire effort [i.e., health care reform] could collapse." Barring that, we are more likely to see Obama sign a bill imposing federal regulations on insurance companies and increasing subsidies for lower-middle-class families than we are to see him sign a drastic reconfiguration of the American health insurance system that includes a massive new entitlement in the form of a "public option."