Democrats’ attempts to coordinate health-care message leave Republicans scratching their heads

Hennesey speculated that the White House, Senate Democrats and House Democrats might each be pushing forward with their own plans so that when reform falls apart they can say they worked as hard as they could but were stymied by a lack of effort from the others in the face of Republican obstructionism.

Even former President Bill Clinton appeared pessimistic about the prospects for health-care reform.

“The health care is hard to do, but I thought it would happen this time because all the trends that prompted me to act are worse,” he said, speaking about health care reform in the past tense during an interview with Fox News. “I thought it would happen, but …”

House leadership aides cautioned against counting them out and said they were even optimistic that the political environment is better now for moderate Democrats on the fence than it was in November when they first passed a bill out of the House.

“It’s too early to look at votes,” said a House Democratic leadership aide. “It’s a question a lot of people are asking but it’s premature to judge the final product and how we’re going to move.”

House Democrats will meet again as a caucus on Tuesday at noon to discuss the president’s proposal in more detail. They have not yet begun to count to see if they have enough votes for a bill, an aide said.

Rep. Charlie Rangel, New York Democrat, said he was trying to remain optimistic, though he indicated that this was the last chance Democrats would have to try to get something passed.

“All I’m thinking is positive thoughts,” Rangel said. “We don’t have as many options as we did before. This is the last time out. This is it. This is it.”

Rep. Patrick Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat, made the case that the recent uproar over a proposed 39 percent insurance rate hike in California by Anthem Blue Cross – which has since been postponed due to political pressure – was going to turn an angry electorate back toward Democrats.

“People are going to change their minds when they realize that they may not have liked government intervention in their health care but they’re sure not going to like their HMOs starting to tell them once again how to run their health care and not get anything in return, and there’s no protections for them when they get ill,” Kennedy told The Daily Caller.

“So all of a sudden, what didn’t look so good initially – our efforts to protect them – are going to start to look better and better as time goes on,” he said.