I was talking to some friends on Capitol Hill this evening about Obama pulling the rug out from under Pelosi and Waxman on the issue of expanding contraceptive coverage under Medicaid in the stimulus bill and I must say their reaction was more akin to Stephen's and drip's in the thread below than I would have thought (as opposed to my own more sanguine reaction). The general feeling was that Obama had stabbed the Democratic leadership (and the women's community) in the back and for no good ends. There was a palpable sense that this boded poorly in terms of future dealings with the bully boys of the Republican right. (Someone characterized it to me as confusing a lack of principle with being strategic.)
There was also a genuine sense of outrage about how this issue was trivialized and belittled in much of the media when, in fact, the CBO had scored this particular item to result in a net savings of $100 million over three years and $400 million over ten years. Waxman and Pelosi staffers are miffed about being undermined and members of the women's community feel like they have been thrown to the wolves right off the bat. So all in all, there is not a lot of happy campers running around the leftward precincts of the Hill.
Then I topped these discussions off by watching leading liberal Chris Matthews make fun of the proposal while yucking it up with subhumans John Ensign and Mike Pence. Now I'm getting in a bad mood as well. And you know what that means -- it's cocktail time.