There's little doubt that MyDD's Jerome Armstrong has forgotten more about the ins and outs of this year's Social Security debate than I'll ever know, but I'm afraid he's a tad off base here:

Clinton will be dead and gone before Social Security needs to be changed, but he's decided that he's had enough of seeing Bush get his ass kicked by Democrats over the issue of Social Security. Did the Republicans come up with a plan when the Clintons tried to reform Healthcare? No, and that's why Bill Clinton got the Democratic Congressional leadership's head handed to him after the '94 midterm election. [Emph. added.]

Actually, there were several Republican health care proposals in 1994, including, perhaps most famously, Bob Dole's and John Chafee's. And while each of the GOP plans had real shortcomings, their existence allowed the Republicans to successfully argue that they weren't just obstructionists; they were in favor of health care reform, just not Hillary Clinton's big government version of it. (Which was bunk, of course, but that's a post for another day. . . .)

I'm not trying to make the case here that we should take a similar approach with Social Security today -- I'm still agnostic on that question, actually -- just explaining why folks like President Clinton and James Carville may be suggesting it. It has the rather notable distinction of having worked before.