I like Chris Hayes’s piece in The Nation about the Tuesday night Common Purpose meetings in Washington between the White House and progressive bigwigs because it is informative. In Philly, we’re doing Drinking Liberally on Tuesday nights (although I haven’t been in too long) and the White House never sends anybody. That’s okay, because we don’t like to mix too much politics with our cocktails.
What I don’t like about Hayes’s piece is that it perpetuates what I consider to be a developing myth. The myth is that the only reason that the Obama administration is still pushing a public option is that progressives have been lobbying so hard for it. My problem with this narrative is that it is only partially true. It is a certainty that the public option would have died if there hadn’t been a visible, motivated, activated constituency out there lobbying for it. I don’t dispute that. That’s not my problem with this storyline.
My problem is that Obama ran on a fairly well-articulated platform that included a public option. That is what he said he wanted to do. The activists are only trying to help him fulfill a campaign promise. The activists didn’t come up with this plan and most of them actually support far more aggressive reform, like a single-payer system. Most activists see the public option as a compromise position, and that helps explain why they are so resistant to making any further concessions. The plan is not the fulfillment of some progressive dream, but a half-measure that progressives are most likely to see as a bare minimum.
The unfolding narrative, however, assumes that the Obama administration has been eager to dilute their own platform in the interest of getting something done, and that they are only reluctantly being dragged across the goal line by heroic grassroots’ activists. I think, and have thought, that this is bullshit.
I don’t care if you want to dismiss this as some kind of 11-Dimensional Chess, but there are certain contours and barriers to passing legislation through Congress, and the Obama administration has been navigating them precisely in the only way I can see they could have if their goal was to pass health care reform with a public option (and keep their campaign promise).
I don’t think that the administration is clairvoyant, and I’m not saying they haven’t adjusted their strategy and perhaps even wavered a bit over time. But it’s pretty clear that they couldn’t pass health care reform without Republican support unless they figured out a way to keep the Democratic caucus in the Senate united. Until last week, the Democrats never had a reliable sixty votes, even in theory, to kill off Senate filibusters.
The administration knew they might need to pass health care reform with less than sixty votes, which is why they muscled home a provision in the budget that would allow the Senate to pass a bill at the 51-vote threshold, using the budget reconciliation process. But, they also knew it would be preferable to pass the bill under regular order at the 60-vote threshold. And if they had to go the 51-vote route, they knew it would be a much easier political sell if they could plausibly and honestly argue that they had made every effort to win over some Republican support.
Back in the winter, when the administration did their first whip-count on the president’s health care plan, they realized that they didn’t have anywhere near the number of votes they would need to pass it through the Senate Finance Committee. They knew that they had zero solid votes from the Republican caucus. If they were going to pass something through Finance, it could not include the robust public option that Obama promised in his campaign.
But, these obstacles were not necessarily deal-breakers. If they could cobble together a reliable 60-vote caucus, they could conceivably fulfill their campaign promise on a strictly party-line vote. Perhaps they could win over Olympia Snowe or Susan Collins. As it turned out, they flipped Arlen Specter and now he is supporting Obama’s plan in the Huffington Post. Yet, as their whip count of Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee showed, they did not have unanimous support for a public option in the Democratic caucus. They might get 60 votes for cloture, but they’d never get thirteen votes on the Finance Committee for a public option.
What they needed to do was to get all five committees with jurisdiction (three in the House, two in the Senate) to report out bills. If they couldn’t, the only way to fulfill that campaign promise would be to use budget reconciliation. But, even if they were going to use budget reconciliation, they wanted to make certain that the failure to pass the bill under regular order did not arise from the Democrats’ inability to report out a bill, but strictly out of Republican obstruction. That would give them the political cover and rationale to pursue the 51-vote strategy.
Four of the five committees with jurisdiction were willing and able to report out bills that fulfilled the campaign promise (and have done so), but the Senate Finance Committee could and would not. Seeing this clearly in advance, the administration knew that there was no point in drawing a line in the sand and demanding that they would not sign any bill without a public option. Doing so would have crippled the Senate Finance Committee’s ability to report out anything at all. And the goal was to get them to report out something. Therefore, major efforts were made to demonstrate that they were willing to compromise in order to (at first, when cloture seemed impossible without it) win over a vote (or maybe two) from the Republicans. The public option became quite visibly negotiable. And, to some degree it was. If they couldn’t win over any Republicans, they might not be able to obtain cloture. They had to at least consider whether there was a deal to be had that would not necessitate using the budget reconciliation process.
The fact that the Democrats now have 60 senators is just as important in bucking up the administration’s resolve in favor of a public option as the streadfast work of the party’s activists. And it was the administration that flipped Specter and got Paul Kirk seated so quickly as Teddy Kennedy’s replacement. But, regardless, the administration was never eager to ditch their campaign promise. If they ever sent a message to Nancy Pelosi to back off a public option, she never received it.
The wavering rhetoric we’ve seen has been calibrated to the political realities in Washington as they have waxed and waned. Simply looking at the task at hand, and the methods available to achieve it, helps explain everything we have seen. And now we are in a position to see the president succeed in enacting a health care overhaul that is largely in keeping with exactly what Obama promised. He’s not clairvoyant, but his strategy has made perfect sense and he deserves as much credit for that as all the activists who have worked so hard to get us to this point. The credit should be shared.
The administration knew they might need to pass health care reform with less than sixty votes, which is why they muscled home a provision in the budget that would allow the Senate to pass a bill at the 51-vote threshold, using the budget reconciliation process. But, they also knew it would be preferable to pass the bill under regular order at the 60-vote threshold. And if they had to go the 51-vote route, they knew it would be a much easier political sell if they could plausibly and honestly argue that they had made every effort to win over some Republican support.
Why? Why not go it alone from the get go? Because Ben Nelson and HoJo would bitch and moan otherwise? I presume you’ve seen the polls that Kos has posted showing the public in love with the idea of bipartisanship, but also not exactly worried about how a good bill gets passed as long as it gets passed. Besides, if they end up passing a shitty bill, the Republicans are going to be the beneficiaries because voters will be pissed off. Do you really think the public care that Bush steamrolled Congress? Of course not.
But, regardless, the administration was never eager to ditch their campaign promise. If they ever sent a message to Nancy Pelosi to back off a public option, she never received it.
I call bullshit on this, too. Doesn’t the name Rahm Emanuel ring a bell? Yeah, most of us here might like to call him the name of that infamous unreleased Rolling Stones documentary but you should know by now how he operates. Do you really think he stays up at night worried that there needs to be a robust PO? The good thing about all this is that it’s probably making him very miserable. Unless you are privy to some super secret information, everything I know tells me that he hates the party’s base. More to the point, he’s a corporate whore(look at that “deal” with Big Pharma). He’d rather not upset the apple cart.
Rahm Emanuel serves the president, not the other way around.
And the President serves the people … and given what he campaigned on .. that’s what we are really fighting for .. and didn’t the President acknowledge the best solution was single-payer .. but that it wasn’t feasible(sounds like he forgot RFK’s words .. or was it Teddy’s at the funeral)? .. he already took that off the table and more watered down is good?
Bravo Booman. If Obama passes what he ran on then this post will be one that you link to again. Pelosi never backs down from what she says she is going to do and I might not like every policy but she gets shit done. NP knows what her caucus can produce,
Loserman was kept on for this cloture vote and the HC debate happily has really moved to how dope will the public option be, not if their will be one at all. Once govt plan is scored well to save $ in House then the Blue Dogs have no cover and the progressives pounce. Grayson cant wait and the media cat nip will be all over his truth to power commentary. KO will have an orgasm. (BTW, I thought KO’s hour long HC piece was mostly his personal therapy for his parents. Calling out PAC owned scum in an earlier show was more powerful and moving piece)
The next pressure on HCR point is what is makeup of the Conference, who sits at that table, and who is bringing the biggest pile of chips. My guess is Prez O has been waiting to play his hand here. I could be wrong but he will throw down and many will fold.
Never leave your pragmatic view of the sausage making Boo because this essential take is needed to ease the liberal soul.
Sorry for the poker analogies and I am happy drunk man after my home state Cornhuskers beat down Mizzou in Columbia.
Inside the Lie Machine
http://www.rollingstone.com/photos/gallery/30234884/inside_the_lie_machine_documents
I think everyone should read the marching orders that Luntz issued since they show why the health care ‘debate’ occasionally sounds like one side is from the bizzarro planet.
Luntz has few ethical constraints so his plan is to use whichever words/ideas that his focus groups indicated are what people hate the most — whether it’s been proposed or not, and it usually hasn’t been. Luntz doesn’t mind lying for his causes, it’s the Republican way.
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Link to Think Progress pdf document here.
Luntz earlier memo in 2001 on obscuring language …
Based on sound science, the government’s standard is that there should be
no more than 50 parts of arsenic per billion.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
Thanks, Oui, that’s a much better format, and I was hoping to find the document in a more useful format.
I’ll say again. Booman has provided the most rational analysis of this whole health care debate from the start.
When you spell it out like you did above it seems so obvious why we’ve seen the moves we have. It’s actually not even complicated. It is, quite simply, the only path that could have been taken to possibly get this thing done. Keep up the great work.
Excellent analysis.
My mantra this year, in response to much of the criticism of Obama from progressives, has been the following:
It’s fine to push, cajole and prod him, but there is no need or advantage to resort to cynicism, casting doubt on his motives or sincerity. Cynicism breeds distrust, and only undermines efforts to govern. Simply put, cynicism does nothing constructive.
Or to put it differently, we do not need to call Obama a traitor to advance the progressive cause.
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CONCORD, N.H. (AP) Oct. 9, 2009 – A federal law inspired by a New Hampshire woman’s courage and enacted through her mother’s determination took effect Friday, sparing seriously ill or injured college students from having to choose between taking time off and keeping their health insurance.
“Michelle’s Law” allows college students to take up to a year off school for medical reasons and remain on their family’s health insurance plan. It is named for Michelle Morse, who died of colon cancer at age 22 in 2005, six months after graduating from Plymouth State University.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."