Alter writes that top Obama aides concluded early that the pursuit for Chuck Grassley's support in particular was not going to pay off. Senior Obama adviser Jim Messina, for instance, pleaded with Senator Max Baucus, who at the time was trying to cut an awesomely bipartisan deal with Senate Republicans, to forget about Grassley.Rahm Emanuel agreed with Messina that Grassley was a non-starter. "They thought the president was wasting his time by having Grassley over to the White House half a dozen times," Alter writes.
Harry Reid, too, had concluded early on that bipartisan support for health reform would never materialize -- but he let Baucus continue pursuing it, anway.
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These players, of course, have their own reasons for leaking this account now. But it seems feasible. After all, a five year old could see at the time that Senate Republicans were playing for time, in order to drag the process on for as long as possible and sour the public on it. Depressing.