The aftermath...

So the talk on the hill is that Democrats are putting everything on pause until Scott Brown is seated, in what appears to be an attempt to look cool, calm, and confident after losing their precious Senate seat. What that means is that it's looking increasingly likely that Dems will revamp the entire bill to try to include Olympia Snowe rather than "ramming something" through the Senate or having the House pass the Senate version of the bill.

If Democrats take that course, it will be, in my humble opinion, a tragic mistake. But if Democrats don't take that course, it appears to them to be a tragic mistake as well. This is why:

Democrats, those vulnerable and not, seem to be under the impression that by scaling back the health care legislation considerably to a few key points and including at least one Republican in the next version passed they will be creating a non-back-room-deal, populist-ish, and ultimately popular legislation. They can claim bipartisanship, they can claim to be listening to the pulse of the American public, and they can claim more of a victory than they would have claimed if they had again quote un-quote rammed something through. This is part of a larger pitch/message strategy that Obama and other key Dems are pursuing, that echoes rumblings about the voters still wanting "change," but feeling misrepresented by Democrats. The idea behind this is that if Democrats can reclaim the anti-insider, "change" message that Obama claims propelled him to victory, they can avoid catastrophic losses in 2010. They can also, if possible, get done with health care as soon as possible, try to make it not as big a deal as it has been over the last 9 months, and move on to economy stupid and job creation which poll much better. They seem to realize that health care has always been an issue that held substantially more resonance with the base than with the general public.

Here's the serious problem I see with that course of action. First I need to make a disclaimer: I'm not a politician and I have not been in public office for the unbelievable amount of time that many of these congresspeople have, so I'd trust their tactics over the voice of one young American blogger. There are probably other things at stake that I do not have an understanding about.

However, I think it would be wiser to do as the SEIU (!!!) suggests and have the House pass the Senate version of the health care bill. (The exclamation points are to indicate how surprising it is that SEIU, the Service Employees International Union, would support the Senate bill after so clearly hating it just a week ago. They had a problem with a particular tax that would be used in the Senate bill to pay for the health care changes called a Cadillac Tax which would in some manner or another hurt union negotiations for those who get (very good) health care through their insurer) Now first off this will require the House not to be that stubborn and go ahead and pass the Senate version of the bill. I personally believe that if the President really pushed it and explained why, the House would, albeit begrudgingly get on board, but it's possible that the House has been too spooked by what happened in Massachusetts to vote it on through.

Still, it would be the fastest way to get the bill on the President's desk, signed and done, with a much more satisfactory base approval than a watered down "bipartisan" bill. I don't, like the Dems seem to, believe that the public will get behind a watered down health care bill. They won't believe it's bipartisan if ony one or two Republicans join in, and they won't believe it's not full of backtoom dealing just because it's watered down. In fact, my guess is that the Republicans will be able to spin this to their favor as long as Democrats have health care on the table. Now tha;t a fairly scary proposition, because it suggests that the public really can't be moved back in support of the bill. I think it's true! Health care fatigue has been taking hold for months already! In a few months no one will remember what version of health care was passed, except perhaps the base, where the Dems have the most to lose by passing something without teeth! The other, and most important thing that the SEIU pointed out, is that Congress has the capacity to revise the bill over the 3 years it takes for it to come into effect. Perhaps after the 2010 elections have taken place, and Democrats feel safe to bring up hot issues again.

If they do pass something less liberal, everyone loses, including the Democrats, because I don't really believe anyone will agree on their claimed victory, conservatives or liberals.

I will allow a significant counter argument to the one I am currently making, and that is that the base won't be substantially more satisfied by the Senate bill than another watered down bill. After all the Senate and House bills minus a PUBLIC OPTION *shining glory* was not "worth passing" in the first place. I admit, it is definitely a possibility that the base would be even happier with a watered down health care bill, because it wouldn't include a mandate for buying insurance which some argue just ends up helping insurance companies. This is a real question worth asking, but either answer is not convincing enough for me to change my position in the debate.


One way or another, it looks like Dems are damn well screwed.


**One note on reconciliation, the budget process that I mentioned in the last post. Apparently, while reconciliation is still feasible, it would take a long time to figure out how to make the health care bill fit, not to mention procefural blocks to slow down the process by Republicans. In the end there may be only 51 votes needed, but apparently the political damage it would do simply by dragging out the process would be too much for almost any subsequent victory to overcome.

**On another side note I'd like to point out that I am clearly a partisan. In other words I'm someone who believes that a Democratic agenda is better for the country than a Republican one, and I'm a realist in the sense that I pretty well genuinely believe that there are only two choices, at least at this point in National American politics, Republican and Democrat. As such, I'm someone who believes that what ever is better for the preservation of the party (in opposition to Republicans) is better for liberals and creates left leaning agenda. Sometimes it's not as left as I'd like, sometimes it's downright, well, right (conservative). Like the Afghanistan decision by the President, or the compromises on the Public Option in the health care bill. These are things that as a partisan I am willing to swallow, even though they make me unhappy, because I know that overall, having Democrats in power is the lesser of two evils (and causes a lot of good, generally). So far, Democrats have not compromised themselves too much for me to stop supporting them, unlike some progressives who want moderate Dems out. It doesn't mean, however, that it's not worth voting for the most progressive candidate possible in the primary... unless they're likely to lose. In other words, I'd rather have a Blue Dog like Heath Shuler, than almost any kind of Republican.

The glaring problem in our system is that somehow those are the only two choices.