Keller @ Large: Health Care Fight Is 'Deja Vu All Over Again'

BOSTON (CBS) - It's been more than 175 years since a French novelist coined the phrase "The more things change, the more they stay the same."

That ancient cliché has never seemed more relevant that it does when you watch the health care reform battle unfolding in Washington.

Almost eight years ago, President Obama came to Capitol Hill to push for passage of Obamacare. He claimed it was a once in a lifetime chance to get it done, and exhorted fellow Democrats to ignore the bill's critic and rally behind him, which they did, approving Obamacare on a straight party line vote.

President Trump came to the hill Tuesday and told his fellow Republicans it's now or never for approving the GOP plan. He warned them that they could face primary opponents of they don't get on board, and told the leader of a group of skeptical congressman that he'd "come after him" if he didn't fall in line, although he was smiling when he said it.

As the late, great Yogi Berra would put it, "It's deja vu all over again."

Health care is a tremendously complicated issue, and politically, it's like a bad mattress - push down on one end, and it jumps up to bite you on the other.

Both Obama back then and Trump now have a point about the politics of this.

If they do it early on in the political cycle, they have time to repair political damage back home, if it's repairable at all.

The vote is set for Thursday. Tune in to see if they lose their nerve, or have the nerve to pass a bill that polls show a majority of the country really doesn't want.