Enthusiasm curbed for Obama health plan

NY Times:

At her home on Tom Sawyer Road here the other night, Bonnie Adkins agreed to begin spreading the word that President Obama’s embattled health care plan needed help.

Ms. Adkins, who for the past two years devoted hundreds of hours helping Mr. Obama get to the White House, hosted a potluck supper that was advertised to Democrats in this eastern Iowa town along the Mississippi River. People were invited to bring a favorite salad or dessert — and their cellphones — to make calls drumming up support for the president’s agenda.

She wondered whether her house would hold everyone, but there was no reason for worry.

“We had 10 people. Not a huge number, but good,” said Ms. Adkins, 55, who has been an Obama volunteer since the first day she saw him during a stop here on March 11, 2007. “The enthusiasm is not there like it was a year ago. Most people, when they get to Nov. 5, put their political hat away and it doesn’t come out for three years.”

As the health care debate intensifies, the president is turning to his grass-roots network — the 13 million members of Organizing for America — for support.

Mr. Obama engendered such passion last year that his allies believed they were on the verge of creating a movement that could be mobilized again. But if a week’s worth of events are any measure here in Iowa, it may not be so easy to reignite the machine that overwhelmed Republicans a year ago.

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The passion is on the other side of this debate. Iowa Sen. Grassley so some of those passions recently and made a quick retreat on the "death panel" issue. Somehow he did not see Sarah Palin's concerns as crazy as many Democrats tried to make the them. He also did not have much trouble getting the Senate to drop the "end of life" panels. If Obama has lost Iowa, he is probably in big trouble.