Let's hope that's not what it takes to break the legislative stranglehold of "Just Say No" R's and right-wing Dems

Our pal Al Kamen concludes today's Washington Post "In the Loop" column with this little stroll down memory lane:

WE'VE BEEN HERE BEFORE

Deja vu? A report in the New York Times said: "Tomorrow night, getting right into the thick of the battle," the president would "carry his message to the people in a nationwide television and radio speech" fighting for enactment of his health reform bill, which opponents tagged as "socialized medicine" and "an entering wedge for the takeover of private medicine by the federal government."
The president was John F. Kennedy, the program was Medicare, the Times story was published on May 20, 1962. Despite the speech, the effort failed until passage in 1964.

One thing we'll never know is whether Medicare and the host of other revolutionary social programs enacted in the wake of President Kennedy's assassination, when President Lyndon Johnson parlayed the country's shock and horror into a groundswell of support for many of the initiatives Kennedy had been unable to move through the obstructionist legislative coalition of Republicans and still-"Democratic" Confederates.

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