Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) called today for President Obama to take a more prominent role on health care reform, saying that “big issues like this never happen without clear, full-throated, muscular presidential leadership.”
On MSNBC, Weiner talked about the Massachusetts senate race, and allowed that “it might not have been only about health care, but it’s clear we’ve got a problem on that issue.”
“We’ve got to keep it much more simple,” he said. “To get 60 votes we’ve kind of lost sight of the fact that the American people don’t look at this as a vote-counting exercise, they look at this as their lives and their health care.”
He also called for the president to “stand up” in his State of the Union address and “essentially recalibrate” and say “here are the basic things we’re trying to do.”
“Big issues like this,” said Weiner, “never happen without clear, full-throated muscular presidential leadership.”
He also commented on his (low) expectations for bipartisanship: “I don’t hold out any hope for my Republican colleagues. From almost the word go they’ve made it clear their strategy has been to stop anything from happening. That’s a given.”
