On Thursday’s health-care summit:

The event Thursday is not a real event about real numbers. This is a theatrical event.
Look, Obama became president of the United States with a theatrical campaign in 2008. Charisma, rhetoric, that’s what he does best. He then tried a year of governing. He didn’t succeed very well. So he is returning to theater Thursday.
And I think it’s going to help him. I think he’s likely to come out ahead as he did when he met with the House Republicans in Baltimore.
His idea is you pivot off that with a bump you get, the confidence, the morale it infuses in your troops in the Senate and the House, and you go and you attempt reconciliation.

On Robert Byrd’s opposition in April 2009 to using reconciliation to pass Obamacare and cap-and-trade:

Since he is one of the inventors of this process, I think he is a pretty good authority on the spirit and intent. And it is a trick. We have never done it for a bill of this scope or size or reform — revolution in — one-sixth of the American economy. However, it’s not illegal. I think it’s still possible.
I think the reason Obama is trying this is not because he wants to placate his left and show that he gave it the college try. This is a man who believes ideologically in this deeply. He sees himself as a world-historical figure, not just the first African-American president, but, like Reagan, a man who changed history. He wants to be the father of national health care.
And if this is passed or jammed or rammed, ultimately we will end up with a Canadian system or a British system and he will be remembered as the man who did it.