Healthcare summit: checking out

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The cable nets have voted on the healthcare summit — and they’re voting with their feet.

For the moment, CNN and Fox News have broken away from minute-to-minute coverage of the summit in favor of having talking heads discuss it. (MSNBC is showing curling. A curling match, as shown here, is the only thing that may last longer than this meeting.)

We don’t know the reasons. But it could be that it’s very clear now that no kind of agreement, or result, is going to emerge from this affair. The meeting has also evolved (or devolved, depending on your perspective) into a wonkfest of the worst kind, where everyone’s talking about their own ideas, their own “take,” but no one is actually having a, you know, discussion.

It’s entirely possible that the networks have decided that transparency really isn’t all that exciting — and that, shockingly, legislating is pretty intricate. But in doing so, they’ve defeated one of the White House’s goals going in, which was to pull back the curtain and compare Democratic ideas versus Republican ones.

You can still find a live stream on the latimes.com site, or on the White House site or on C-SPAN. It’s all there if you want it. We’re staying aboard. And Joe Biden is talking — and talking -- about “bending the cost curve.” Rep. Mike Enzi’s looking for a window to jump out of.

And by the way, Canada leads Switzerland in the curling match, 6 to 4. Only 14 hours to go.

-- James Oliphant