It's a Bluff Folks
I gotta hand it to the Obama administration and the House and Senate leadership. As inept as they were in advancing health care reform legislation, they are doing a fantastic job of pretending they might still be able to muscle it through. Nancy Pelosi is talking about the House voting on the already-passed Senate bill. Harry Reid is talking about using reconciliation to pass an amended version of their own bill through with only 51 votes instead of 60....perhaps even resurrecting the public option!!! And the President is releasing his own plan and is convening a bipartisan summit with Republicans to discuss the legislation and "seek out compromise".
There's only one problem with this sudden with this new aggressive approach to health care legislation. Actually, scratch that. There are a ton of problems. The first, and most obvious, is that Obama's plan is pure political theater. The House and Senate have already passed a bill. There is zero chance they're going to drop that legislation entirely and start anew with Obama's bill.
Second, Nancy Pelosi passed the first bill with exactly two votes to spare, and that was with tough concessions to satisfy anti-abortion hardliners in the Democratic caucus. I cannot imagine a scenario where she could finnagle 218 votes for health care reform now with increasingly nervous members of her caucus hearing overwhelming opposition from their constituents, even those in Massachusetts. Plus, the Senate bill that they'd have to vote on doesn't contain tough anti-abortion language needed to get the support of Bart Stupak and his boys. The House is only slightly more likely to relegalize slavery than they are to pass the Senate health care bill between now and Election Day.
And as for the Senate, at the last count, Harry Reid was lacking the 51 votes needed to push through health care reform via reconciliation. The specific number is hard to pin down, but the last I heard 12 Democrats were "no's" on reconciliation, meaning Reid is only pretending that's an option.
Everybody in Washington has known health care reform died on January 19 with the election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts. The Democrats' "Weekend at Bernie's" routine feigning continued life for the legislation is a gamble on their part being instigated exclusively for the purpose of trying to control the postmortem narrative and possibly cutting their losses in November. If nothing else it promises to be entertaining. Democrats are giving one final faux-herculean push to show their base they've done everything possible while shining the spotlight on the opposition in the hopes of reminding the American people that the Republicans are not bargaining in good faith.
It certainly is a gamble. I think they'd be better off forcing the GOP to spend endless hours filibustering to kill the bill, but that could backfire to if a public that opposes this legislation 2-1 blames the Democrats for the maneuver and wasting even more time that they believe should be dedicated to creating jobs (or rather magically producing jobs out of thin air without adding a nickel to the deficit).
The best I can hope for out of this gambit is some entertaining gamesmanship between two political parties engaged in fight-to-the-death trench warfare, but I can't help but think it'll be all for naught for the Democrats. They greatly overestimated the intelligence of the American people believing that, amidst the worst economy since the Great Depression, they'd be given a little latitude to govern following their 2008 mandate before the public turned on them. On the contrary, the inability of the economy to immediately bounce back to 1999-era growth rates within a year has voters clamoring to return the reins of power back to the very people who caused the crisis.
Basically, the picked the worst time in more than a century to become a governing majority, they never coalesced as a party given their internal ideological fractures, and they wildly underestimated the opposition's ability to monolithically hamstring them on every piece of legislation of even modest significance. And as a consequence, a new generation of unimaginable radicals is about to land on Washington's doorsteps in the months ahead.
There's only one problem with this sudden with this new aggressive approach to health care legislation. Actually, scratch that. There are a ton of problems. The first, and most obvious, is that Obama's plan is pure political theater. The House and Senate have already passed a bill. There is zero chance they're going to drop that legislation entirely and start anew with Obama's bill.
Second, Nancy Pelosi passed the first bill with exactly two votes to spare, and that was with tough concessions to satisfy anti-abortion hardliners in the Democratic caucus. I cannot imagine a scenario where she could finnagle 218 votes for health care reform now with increasingly nervous members of her caucus hearing overwhelming opposition from their constituents, even those in Massachusetts. Plus, the Senate bill that they'd have to vote on doesn't contain tough anti-abortion language needed to get the support of Bart Stupak and his boys. The House is only slightly more likely to relegalize slavery than they are to pass the Senate health care bill between now and Election Day.
And as for the Senate, at the last count, Harry Reid was lacking the 51 votes needed to push through health care reform via reconciliation. The specific number is hard to pin down, but the last I heard 12 Democrats were "no's" on reconciliation, meaning Reid is only pretending that's an option.
Everybody in Washington has known health care reform died on January 19 with the election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts. The Democrats' "Weekend at Bernie's" routine feigning continued life for the legislation is a gamble on their part being instigated exclusively for the purpose of trying to control the postmortem narrative and possibly cutting their losses in November. If nothing else it promises to be entertaining. Democrats are giving one final faux-herculean push to show their base they've done everything possible while shining the spotlight on the opposition in the hopes of reminding the American people that the Republicans are not bargaining in good faith.
It certainly is a gamble. I think they'd be better off forcing the GOP to spend endless hours filibustering to kill the bill, but that could backfire to if a public that opposes this legislation 2-1 blames the Democrats for the maneuver and wasting even more time that they believe should be dedicated to creating jobs (or rather magically producing jobs out of thin air without adding a nickel to the deficit).
The best I can hope for out of this gambit is some entertaining gamesmanship between two political parties engaged in fight-to-the-death trench warfare, but I can't help but think it'll be all for naught for the Democrats. They greatly overestimated the intelligence of the American people believing that, amidst the worst economy since the Great Depression, they'd be given a little latitude to govern following their 2008 mandate before the public turned on them. On the contrary, the inability of the economy to immediately bounce back to 1999-era growth rates within a year has voters clamoring to return the reins of power back to the very people who caused the crisis.
Basically, the picked the worst time in more than a century to become a governing majority, they never coalesced as a party given their internal ideological fractures, and they wildly underestimated the opposition's ability to monolithically hamstring them on every piece of legislation of even modest significance. And as a consequence, a new generation of unimaginable radicals is about to land on Washington's doorsteps in the months ahead.
posted by Mark at 9:30 PM
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