Jonathan Cohn at TNR:
The ritual is becoming familiar. Health care reform passes a major political hurdle. And progressives don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Last time, the occasion was a vote in the House of Representatives. Health care reform passed by the slimmest of margins, but not before conservative Democrats had extracted a major concession on abortion rights.
This time, it was a vote in the Senate–not on whether to pass a bill, but whether to begin debating one. This measure, too, passed by the slimmest of margins, but not before conservative Democrats and one notorious independent made clear they were prepared to shut things down later if legislation includes a public insurance option.
It’s no fun to watch this unfold. And yet this is the exactly the sort of drama you should expect for the next few weeks, as the Senate deliberations play out.
The bill Majority Leader Harry Reid introduced last week is not everything it could be–not by a long shot. And progressives will try their best to improve it. But the real battle will be an ongoing rearguard action, to fend off changes from the right–amendments that, in many cases, Republicans will support even though they have no intention of voting for the final bill. Abortion. Immigration. The mandates, for individuals and employers. You name it.
For progressives, victories are more likely to come in the form of ground not conceded than ground gained. Every day that legislation doesn’t get worse is a day to cherish.
I once heard an activist say that leadership is the process of managing your constituency’s disappointment. If that’s accurate, then the next few months are going to offer ample opportunities for leadership.
Yep. The opt-out public option is almost certainly toast, and we’ll end up instead with something closer to Olympia Snowe’s trigger idea — assuming we even end up with that much. And there’s no telling what other amendments are going to get tacked on and then make it through the final conference report. Whatever happens, though, it’s not going to be pretty. Watching sausage getting manufactured never is.
Put it this way: imagine there’s a big meeting with every member of the Democratic caucus in both chambers. You stand at the front of the room and make a presentation: “If health care reform falls apart after having come this far, tens of millions of Americans will suffer; costs will continue to soar; the public will perceive Democrats as too weak and incompetent to act on their own agenda; the party will lose a lot of seats in the midterms and possible forfeit its majority; and President Obama will have suffered a devastating defeat that will severely limit his presidency going forward. No one will even try to fix the dysfunctional system again for decades, and the existing problems will only get worse.”
For progressive Democrats, the response would be, “That’s an unacceptable outcome, which we have to avoid.”
For conservative Democrats, the response would be, “We can live with failure.”
This necessarily affects negotiations. One contingent wants to avoid failure; the other contingent considers failure a satisfactory outcome. Both sides know what the other side is thinking.
Keep in mind that these moderate Dems have already gone on record articulating the dramatic need for reform — if only as a way to gain cover for agreeing to vote to move the bill forward. When final success is genuinely within reach, moderate Dems will quite literally be faced with a stark choice between embracing whatever compromise emerges, and letting the whole thing come crashing down, with potentially catastrophic consequences for their party and, by their own lights, the country as a whole.
On the other hand, the parochialism and narcissism that often reigns in the Senate never ceases to amaze. Yes, it’s gonna be a brutal couple of months.
