In front of adoring doctors in their lab coats, Obama tried to do several things this afternoon:

1) Leverage public impatience with the health-care debate against opponents of his bill, i.e., “If you’re sick of the debate, just pass the Democratic bill and get it over with”; 2) Position himself, as usual, as the middle ground between advocates of a single-payer system and looser regulations; 3) Put all the flaws of the current system on the insurance companies and argue that the insurers will continue to run out of control absent immediate action; 4) Portray himself as an advocate for lower deficits, lower costs, and “the largest middle class tax cut for health care in history,” with no countervailing downsides, costs, or tough choices; 5) Take ownership of some Republican ideas and paint all the others as “less regulation” and “tinker[ing] around the edges”; 6) Make himself sound above politics and merely insistent that Congress “finish its work”; 7) Paint reconciliation as simply an “up-or-down” vote on a measure that already won a Senate super-majority. It’s all rhetorically clever as far as it goes. But the problem here has never been the salesmanship, but the bill itself, which is an anchor around anyone trying to sell it.