The message has been sent: President Obama is deliberately not ruling out a Democrats-only strategy to break the deadlock on health care.

At an online “strategy session” this afternoon sponsored by Organizing for America — formerly the grass-roots mobilization arm of his presidential campaign — Obama promised to move ahead on a health care overhaul “one way or another,” regardless of whether the Senate Finance Committee can reach an agreement that can win the support of three Senate Republicans.

Responding to a question about whether the bipartisan talks are doing any good, Obama said he wants “a good product that includes some Republican ideas.” But, he added, “I have no control over what the other side decides is its political strategy. My commitment to the American people is, we’re going to get this done one way or another.”

Liberal Democrats and progressive groups have been increasingly frustrated at how far the Obama administration, and particularly Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus of Montana, have been going to win Republican support — especially if the effort means getting rid of a proposed government-run health plan to compete with private insurers. They’ve noted that even Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, one of the three Republicans Baucus has been negotiating with, has said he might not support a deal if it can’t get substantial GOP support — a remark that has convinced them the Republicans aren’t negotiating in good faith.

The White House is weighing in on the question of what's appropriate behavior and what isn't when constituents confront their elected officials about health care in town hall meetings.

Deputy press secretary Bill Burton was asked Monday afternoon about the health rage sweeping the nation and comments by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer, D-Md., casting aspersions on the patriotism of citizens who have shouted down members of Congress at health care forums.

Speaking on Air Force One as the president returned to Washington from the summit with his counterparts from Canada and Mexico in Guadalajara, Burton said President Obama supports "a spirited debate" and "a real vigorous conversation" about health care. "I think there's actually a pretty long tradition of people shouting at politicians in America," Burton said. "So if people want to come and have their concerns and their questions answered, the president thinks that's important."

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele had some explaining to do this afternoon, after loud and nasty protests by conservative activists have disrupted Democratic town hall meetings around the country and given the GOP’s supporters a bad image.

It shouldn’t have been a surprise that most of the questions on Steele’s conference call with reporters were about the protests — especially on a day when the Democratic National Committee compiled some of the ugliest incidents into a Web ad charging that Republicans have “called out the mob.” But Steele couldn’t decide whether to disown the protesters or embrace them. So he did a little of both.

“We are not inciting anybody to go out and disrupt anything,” Steele said. But “as citizens, they have a right to express their point of view.”

President Obama is back in the country, and today he made sure that everyone involved in the health care debate knows it. When he summoned the press this morning to announce his nomination of Dr. Regina Benjamin as the next surgeon general, Obama opened with a lengthy monologue about the importance of getting a health care overhaul done.

“I just want to put everybody on notice, because there was a lot of chatter during the week that I was gone: We are going to get this done,” Obama said. “Inaction is not an option. And for those naysayers and cynics who think that this is not going to happen, don’t bet against us. We are going to make this thing happen, because the American people desperately need it.”

Obama was trying to tell Congress that his attention hasn’t wandered from health care just because he was out of the country, on visits to Russia and Africa. But the forceful rhetoric still leaves a host of specific question unresolved — like whether the president now intends to get more involved in the process, and whether he’ll ask the centrist House Blue Dog Democrats if they’re really prepared to sink a health care bill that doesn’t meet their specifications.

Though Republicans still love to portray him as an urban elite, President Obama managed to more or less split the rural vote with John McCain during last year's election. Now, the White House is mounting a summer-long effort to help tailor the administration's agenda to small-town America.

Obama on Tuesday announced a rural tour that will see Cabinet secretaries fan out across the country to discuss issues including broadband deployment, rural health, economic development and agriculture. The tour begins on Wednesday, when Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack visit Wattsburg, Pa., to discuss telecommunications issues.

"Rural America is vast and diverse, and different communities face different challenges and opportunities," Obama said in a statement. "That's why we're going out to hear directly from the people of rural America about their needs and concerns and what my administration can do to support them."

President Obama has regularly paid homage to ailing Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., for showing leadership trying to revamp the U.S. health care system. But now that the Congressional Budget Office has put a $1 trillion price tag on a preliminary draft of a Kennedy health bill and concluded it would reduce the ranks of uninsured Americans by about one-third, or 16 million, administration officials are trying to put just a bit of space between the White House and the liberal icon.

Team Obama is acutely sensitive to concerns that it is creating an expensive government-supervised health system -- a charge that congressional Republicans are lobbing with glee.

Obama had barely finished addressing the American Medical Association on the need for an overhaul plan Monday when GOP senators and members pounced on the CBO forecast, charging that "the Democratic plan" Kennedy crafted would force millions of working Americans to lose the care they get now, by creating a public insurance option that would compete with private health plans.

For the most part, President Obama has taken a hands-off approach to the health care overhaul effort, outlining general principles and letting Congress write the bill. Today, though, he made a few specific requests in writing, including one that seems more important to him than most: He wants a “hardship waiver” from a proposed requirement that all Americans buy health insurance.

In a letter to Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Chairman Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Finance Chairman Max Baucus of Montana, Obama declared that “if we are going to make people responsible for owning health insurance, we must make health care affordable. If we do end up with a system where people are responsible for their own insurance, we need to provide a hardship waiver to exempt Americans who cannot afford it.”

That statement shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who remembers the Democratic presidential candidate debates last year, in which Obama steadfastly refused to require coverage of individuals — except children — and argued that most uninsured Americans lack coverage not because they don’t want it, but because they can’t afford it.

When Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus laughs, you know President Obama and Congress don’t have their health care plan locked down yet.

This afternoon, Obama met at the White House with Baucus and the other Senate Democrats from the chamber’s two health care panels: Finance and the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee. After the meeting, all pledged full speed ahead on health care, and Baucus said the goal was to have a bill on Obama’s desk by October.

But when asked if the president and Senate Democrats had talked about how to pay for it — perhaps the most difficult part of all — the Montana Democrat’s laugh told pretty much everything we need to know.

“There was some discussion of that,” he said. “It’s all on the table, and we’ll figure that out.”

The last time Congress tried to overhaul the health care system, most Americans didn’t see any personal stake in it, other than possibly the rationed care the critics warned them about.

Today, White House officials gave another example of how they’re going to help lawmakers make a better case this time. They released a report predicting that most Americans’ income will go up if the federal government can get health care costs under control.

The report, “The Economic Case for Health Care Reform,” by the Council of Economic Advisers, predicts that the annual income for a typical family of four would be $2,600 higher in 2020 than it would have been without an overhaul — and nearly $10,000 higher in 2030. That’s because the increases in efficiency and lower deficits would help the economy grow faster than it would have otherwise, according to the report.

There were always hints that Barack Obama was going to try to be the first community organizer president, and now the mass-mobilization drive that became famous during his campaign is gearing up to tackle two of the biggest issues before Congress.

One of them probably won’t be much of a challenge. It’s the other one that presents the real test.

This morning, Organizing for America, the Democratic National Committee group that’s supposed to continue the work of the campaign organizing drive, launched an “action center” to campaign for the confirmation of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. There, Obama supporters can sign an online petition of support; write a letter to the editor of their local paper, with talking points helpfully supplied; or call their senators.

So far, President Obama has shown he’ll be a lot more flexible with Congress on health care than Bill Clinton was. No pen-waving, veto-threat moments this time. And now it appears that the mass-mobilization drive that’s left over from his campaign will be flexible in mounting a health care campaign, too.

Organizing for America, the mobilizing drive founded by former Obama campaign manager David Plouffe, is raising funds for its campaign to help Obama get a health care overhaul bill through Congress. The plan, according to the fundraising e-mail that went out today, is to “train volunteers, hire organizers, place ads, hold local educational events, bring constituent voices straight to Congress, and make sure your real life stories are heard louder than the lobbyists’ spin.”

But Organizing for America supporters aren’t laying out the policy specifics they’re organizing around. They certainly won’t make any special push on the hot-button issues, such as whether there should be a government-run public health plan to compete with private insurers. Instead, according to spokeswoman Natalie Wyeth, the group will stick to the three general principles Obama outlined yesterday: the final bill must cut health care costs, allow Americans to choose their own doctor and health plan, and give all Americans access to “quality, affordable health care.”

The mass pledge by health care providers today to reduce $2 trillion of spending reflects some cold political calculations by hospitals, doctors and other key players about President Obama's to reshape the U.S. medical system.

Chief among these is that Obama is likely to prevail in his efforts to expand access to public insurance and allow the government to negotiate Medicare outpatient prescription drug prices.

In speeches and policy pronouncements, Obama has successfully twinned an overhaul of the health system with the broader economic recovery. And with fortified Democratic majorities in both houses, the administration is working hard with Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., and other allies to move legislation in the next two months.