When we talk about cloture, what we really mean is that if even one senator objects to a motion in the Senate, it takes 60 votes to overcome their objection and proceed to the next order of business. It’s not different if one senator objects, or forty senators object, you still need sixty to overcome their objection. If Harry Reid makes a motion to begin debate, he’s need cloture because at least one Republican seems to object to anything he does. The same is true if Reid makes a motion to end debate and hold a vote. So, when it comes time to work on the health care reform bill, Reid is going to need cloture to start the debate and then he will need cloture to end the debate. He’ll also need one additional cloture vote, but more on that later.
Joe Lieberman has all but promised to give Reid a vote to start debate, including the votes on all the amendments. But he has also all but promised to deny Reid a vote to end debate if the bill still has a public option in it. This is the worst of both worlds. If the Senate debates the health care bill for two months and can’t get cloture at the end of the process, all we’ll get for Christmas is one big pile of epic fail. Any chance to introduce a different bill this year will be gone. I don’t even know if they’d have time to do the budget reconciliation process. We’d wind up not only without a public option, but perhaps with nothing at all.
By putting the public option in the base bill, it requires 60 votes to strip it out. I don’t think there are 20 Democrats who are willing to do that, so it looks like it’s going to be quite a challenge to figure out how to satisfy Lieberman. If Lieberman’s mind cannot be changed, then this move of Reid’s has just put the whole reform effort at risk. It would actually be better for Lieberman to join the filibuster on the front end so we don’t risk wasting the next two months debating something that cannot pass. In that case, Reid would substitute something more palatable to the asshats who represent the insurance industry and pass the damn thing. Yeah, there would be amendment introduced to put the public option back in, and it would fail while getting over 50 votes.
That would set up the argument for the public option. It passed the House, got a majority in the Senate, is supported by the White House, and is popular in the polls. In the Conference Committee, they would put back in the language for the public option, and dare Lieberman and any other members of the caucus to kill the president’s health care reform in the final cloture vote when it is inches away his signing pen.
It’s the only way this can work, and as far as I can tell, they’ve just screwed it up.
I’ve been saying all along that this is going to come down to a situation where the final version of the bill is going to be some weak piece of crap, and then the Obama administration will launch a full court press to convince progressives to cave on their principles and accept the piece of crap for the “good of the nation.” And many of them will….
Okay, let’s address that.
As it stands now, the House is struggling to pass a robust public option. It looks like they are going to have to settle for a non-robust public option. That could be okay because that’s the best they were ever going to get out of the Senate anyway. But, it’s sad that we can’t go in with a stronger negotiating stand.
But Reid’s gambit is not likely to do what you fear? Why?
Because they simply do not have 60 votes to strip the public option out. The PO is going to stay in the Senate bill unless he withdraws it. What’s going to happen, most likely, is that the Senate will simply fail to pass anything. So, no conference, and the whole process dies.
Now, if Reid cannot get cloture to start debate, he can just withdraw the bill and reintroduce one that can get cloture. But if he does get cloture to start debate, he’s stuck. He has no way to end debate.
The only way a public option gets done in that scenario (after all the calendar days are gone) is budget reconciliation, but having failed to pass a bill with the PO is such dramatic fashion, its chances in the reconciliation process are grim.
No, this is not likely to result in a crappy bill in regular order, but no bill. And a crappy bill, if it passes at all, will pass through reconciliation, making it doubly crappy.
Obama avoided giving this kind of clout to anyone all year long, and now he’s let every member of the caucus hold reform hostage just to please a bunch of grumpy liberals who don’t understand process. And, no, I don’t think this was intentional. He screwed this up.
Now he has to fight on the wrong battlefield at the wrong time to get any reform passed at all.
This grumpy liberal is happy with no bill. Good. Rejected. Get that shit out of here.
If a bill was going to get rejected it should have been real health care reform–a single payer bill. I blame the president for aiming for the compromise from the beginning.
I’m highly suspicious or your plan to enact a robust public plan. The level of subterfuge required to engage in the process you prescribe is simply counterproductive to passing such monumental legislation. It’s too clever by half. Obama tried to be too clever and is paying the price (assuming he really is following the strategy you say he is following–and hey, that’s cool you sort of made news–that you were on that call with the president–where according to Ezra Obama winked at you guys and implied he’s down with the process you prescribe).
Anyway, I am not convinced Obama is even on the same team as the grumpy liberals. Or even on your team, for that matter. In fact, I highly suspect Holy Joe is doing exactly what Obama wants.
In any case no bill is better than the bill Obama seemed ready to sign.
The progressives can claim at least a small victory–defeating a deeply corrupt bill–if that does happen.
But it ain’t over yet.
Setting aside all the people who will die because this bill fails, does it ever occur to you that there’s a bit of a zero-sum game here? If the Democrats fail, the Republicans replace them. I know you detest that situation with every fiber in your body, but do you at least acknowledge it?
Bill Clinton would have been a much better president if he hadn’t lost Congress to a bunch of lunatics. You know that, right?
So, even if you don’t give a shit about anyone who might get affordable access to health care under this bill (whatever it turns out to be) don’t you have any level of trepidation about turning over the world’s most lethal arsenal to people even more unhinged than the Bushes?
It’s not that I don’t see the danger of Republican rule. I see the downside. It’s scary stuff indeed.
In fact, I would like nothing more than to reverse the long-term rightward lurch our country has taken. I just don’t have any faith that the Democrats can do it. They have failed miserably and are hardly discernible from the Republicans anymore.
Shit, last year the Obama fans and Hillary fans were battling out over who was holier than thou re health care. Now that the Dem winner wins the general in a landslide and has massive public support for real health care reform we get the . . . Mitt Romney plan? And you’re castigating liberals for not knowing the art of politics and what’s possible?
We need a new strategy. Like not being afraid to walk away empty. Yes, we are playing for keeps. If you haven’t noticed the Dem strategy for the last 30 years has been to cave-in and give your marbles away so that you wouldn’t have to lose them. The Dems have been afraid to stand tall and have constantly been ceding ground so there is no more ground to cede. In short, more radical change is needed and fast.
And yes, let’s do talk about real lives. We are playing with real lives. Over 40,000 dead in a year. I don’t care how much Obama’s political operation wants to shoot the messenger of that particularly alarming fact (like leaking to their favorite source, Politico, that the messenger called a lobbyist friend of Steny Hoyer a bad name). But people are dying every day and I don’t believe the president is fighting as hard for each and every one of those lives as he should be.
Someone that wants to fix the system for real would understand we need to put a stop to this likely legislation (the pos Obama has roughly outlined for months). It is much worse than the status quo . . .
This is not an acceptable compromise. It kills far more people than it will ever save–it further entrenches an immoral and inefficient system. Plus, it “reforms” health care mostly on the backs of the middle class.
Obama is better off without passing it. But he may pull it off yet, don’t lose faith.
I don’t share your confidence that the ship is headed for disaster. Here are a few reasons:
I don’t believe Lieberman is really going to kill Reid’s bill, and if he does then I think he would killed the final report from the conference committee. I also don’t think the Democrats should pass anything like the Baucus bill and claim they’ve achieved health reform.
In short, I really don’t think much has changed in the last two days, and recent news just exposes the situation that already existed. Every round of public opposition just brings more pressure to bear on the Senate, and that improves the chances of a decent bill turning into law.
to pay attention to here that I think is lost in the minute by minute responses that blogging generates – President Obama, himself, has been hanging back.
Why is he doing that? To the FDL crowd it is, yet again, a sign of weakness and a non-committal attitude. But one has to wonder if he is waiting for the players to take their positions before entering the, reconfigured, battlefield. For now this is still Reid’s baby, we have a CBO score coming out and if it says the PO plan is cheaper than the FC bill… well then I would expect Obama to swing that hammer on every conservadem who tries to pop up with their “concerns”. That still leaves Joe, but my inclination is to think that Obama has some pull there. If I’m wrong, and he doesn’t, then we never stood a chance of passing a PO through the Senate to begin with.
In fact, it is only someone like Joe (coming from a safe blue state and with a penchant for thinking of only himself at the expense of even getting re-election) that could stand up to the one two punch that Reid’s proposed bill will offer: a less costly bill that is deficit neutral or better, and a very heavy nod to state’s rights to choose their own outcome via the opt-out. Those are usually the two biggest soap boxes that conservatives grandstand on, if they are kicked out of the way the only person willing to hang them self on vague platitudes that are in juxtaposition to his stated beliefs and that of his constituents is a man like Joe (who, in the end, can still be bought).
juxtaposition
contradistinction
sorry to nitpick.
No harm done, I didn’t even know the word.
Here are my hunches—
Obama and Lieberman are sincerely at odds on many counts (and that is all to Obama’s credit, in my view). The trouble is, Lieberman is very aware of how much Obama is convinced of his (Lieberman’s) “indispensability”.
Obama isn’t what would have been considered a “liberal” in pre-1972 the U.S. He’s a solid centrist who often goes to the “Right” when the issue is make-or-break”, a defender of military supremacy, and for most practical purposes, conventional in his practice of government.
By the way, I wonder, “Just how many ‘progressives’ are there, anyway?
There is no “liberal” majority in the Congress, there’s a nominal (but impracticable) Democratic majority. The Dems and Republicans play together to serve the interests of the enduring centers of political power, not, of course, popular interests of average Americans, for which they feign much concern.
This circumstance deserves a great deal more direct and prolonged discussion and debate. It’s at the heart of everything else.
What is Obama “all about”? How should his political orientation be best understood? What did the heated rivalry of Obama and Hilary Clinton during the primary campaigns indicate about the view of these aforementioned centers of political power?—both Republican-flavored and Democrat-flavored.
We need a much better, and an open, understanding on these issues.
You did a great job in your original post of explaining the supposed wiggle room in Lieberman’s statements, and your finger-pointing here is depressing but apt.
This is incredibly discouraging, and even more so because most blogs don’t seem to me to be discussing the right things–strange framing and too much haring off into irrelevancies and lefties feeling our feelings.
I don’t know, though, if Obama had any choice here. Reid seemed determined no matter what the WH said to him to take this route–his Hail Mary pass to win reelection. (And sure enough, lefties have been treating him as a hero.) I think Schumer and others citing pressure from progressives is cya for Reid, as is the nonsense about “don’t bet against the leader.”
BooMan, at some point Obama needs to get all 60 Dems to vote for cloture. It’s tough, it’s not easy, but it has to happen in the next few months right? We can keep putting it off and pretend that it will be so much easier AFTER the committee process and AFTER conference and AFTER the public option was defeated in an amendment process, but I don’t think it ever gets easier.
If the public option was defeated in the amendment process in the Senate, then every Conservadem would say “see, it can’t get 60 votes, therefore you’d better not add it in conference”. And then when Obama and Reid and Pelosi try to stick it back in during the conference committee, we’d get scary quotes from the likes of Lieberman and Lincoln that they would consider filibustering a bill that had the public option. Then we’d have folks saying “they should just dump the P.O., otherwise this will all go down in flames”. This scenario, where the rubber meets the road, is going to happen eventually no matter what.
Now, you are right that maybe there is more pressure to not filibuster the final bill versus the pre-conference version. But I think that is a real fine line. From what you are saying, if it gets filibustered before conference then it is done for the year. If that’s true, then I think the stakes are just as high in both phases of the process. A Dem Senator willing to screw his party on its biggest issue of the decade is either persuadable in the final analysis, or he’s not. If you can’t persuade Holy Joe now (and I think he can be persuaded by Obama), then you’ll never be able to persuade him short of capitulating entirely and eliminating the public option.
I’d rather see no health reform than one with no public option. Sorry, that’s my line in the sand. Liberals have compromised over and over and over again despite having a majority in the House and Senate. There comes a time when Conservadems have to compromise as well. If they won’t — reconciliation. Obama knew this might eventually happen, that’s why he laid the groundwork for it.
But this is the right battlefield and the right time. Can Obama get these Dems in line or not on health care reform? We’ll find out.
I think I’m going to have to agree with you existenz. While I understand Booman’s argument, and have been awed by the depth and sensibility of it, we are at a point where that inevitability factor that Booman talks about for the final vote is already here. Most people, outside of chicken little liberals and contrarian pundits, believe that Obama is working to solve this problem and that it is going to get done.
In fact, a rolling back by Obama of resistance like the type Lieberman is saying (which boils down to a pretty squishy hypothetical about how and when he will filibuster) would give other conservadems second thoughts. When you have the likes of Ben Nelson and some of the other roadblocks not coming up to the cameras saying how unsure they are of what is happening and concern-trolling for the cameras you know that there is some real pressure on the entire caucus to get this done.
What this will take is some real horse trading, and expenditure of Obama’s political and public approval capital in order to whip these last few 3-4 votes. No one said it would be easy, ever. But it can still be done, and like you said these same folks were going make threats either now or before the final cloture vote. Stopping them from doing so once is as good as shutting down that threat, so why not now?
“…just to please a bunch of grumpy liberals who don’t understand process.”
[ No condescension there! ]
Because, naturally, if they’d understood at all, they’d have seen the issues and the stakes just as you make them out to be, huh?
Gee! It’s those damn liberals screwing everything up again!!!
All of which is why I think Reid himself deliberately betrayed us.
Maybe. But if he thought he could do that, he was relying on losing an opening cloture vote. Lieberman would then have outsmarted him.
If Reid wanted to take the pressure off for PO by demonstrating that it couldn’t get 60 votes, he needs to lose the opening cloture vote to begin debate, not win it. If he loses it, he can say ‘see, I told you I didn’t have the votes.’ and then pursue Snowe’s trigger or something.
But if he gets the go ahead to start debate, he’s stuck. He can’t get rid of the PO and he can’t pass it.
Most likely scenario, even if he tried to double-cross us, is that he got played for a fool once again. And it looks like the WH did, too.
The credible threat that “if you go into this building, I’ll blow it up when you try to leave” just means that the person won’t go into the building.
And if the person didn’t want to go into the building in the first place, then that person’s best friend is the terrorist.
“Most likely scenario, even if he tried to double-cross us, is that he got played for a fool once again. And it looks like the WH did, too.”
But, but, but…!!!! How could that happen to a political genius!?!?
on whether Lieberman is negotiating or standing on the “principle” that he’s bought and paid for and gonna deliver. As some have noted, CT has many insurance companies and this may be playing a large part in his stance.
I think that they have him in a room, and are asking “OK, Joe, what do we need to do to get you to play ball on this?” We will know within 2 days, IMHO, whether this is gonna be pulled or not.
If it is, god help Joe.
If Lieberman is going to win reelection, he’s going to need the GOP to do the same thing they did last time. Field a joke of a candidate and give him no support. So, this doesn’t really hurt Joe unless he loses his chairs over it.
I have seen speculation that Lieberman may be considering going to become a lobbyist, for insurers. If so, he may be immovable, and reconciliation would then be the next step. It is, after all, after Oct 15
But Obama and Reid have no one to blame but themselves for this mess(if that’s what it becomes) .. they’ve indulged HoJo all along .. backstabbing Lamont .. you name it .. all while the DFH’s told them HoJo couldn’t be trusted .. and if HC crashes and burns because of HoJo .. we’ll have been proven right again … the other thing I wonder is .. how much is this just HoJo hogging the last remaining limelight like the cock sucker he is? Because he’s got to know he’s toast come 2012 .. and does he want to be known as the asshat who stomped on Teddy Kennedy’s grave? … he owes Obama and Reid … so why would he spit in their face when push came to shove? This is where we need an LBJ type .. because while HoJo would still talk his dumb game … he’d vote the right way in the end .. because you didn’t cross LBJ like that .. and if you did .. can you say Jimmy Hoffa?
Well, Obama is from Chicago, after all …
Reconciliation.
That’s Reid’s trump. Of course, it is a poisoned chalice, which would piss off the Repukeliscum no end, but that may be what is needed to pull this l’il chestnut out of the coals still smokin’ hot.
Yeah, but it won’t work once the PO fails in spectacular and humiliating fashion under regular order.
As I see it, either he passes it though the Senate now, or it’s dead.
He barely kept it alive through the Finance mark-up, and he did it by making sure the votes against it in that committee were known to mean nothing. He can’t pull that off now that it is part of the base bill.
I can’t see if being “humiliating” if it gets 57-59 votes in the Senate.
That’s like saying the public option would suffer a “humiliating” defeat under your preferred scenario, where it only gets 51-53 votes in the Senate amendment process. Headlines would blare “Public Option defeated in decisive Senate vote”, but you think it would live on because Obama wants it.
Yet, you think 57-59 votes in favor of health reform would kill health reform. If Obama came out on the day of the vote and gave one of his stirring speeches about the power of millions calling for change against special interests, then pressed the case for reconciliation, we’d still be in good shape (or at least, not in horrible shape). We’d know who our real enemies are, and would act accordingly. Voters want health reform and would applaud Obama’s attempts to get it done.
“Yeah, but it won’t work once the PO fails in spectacular and humiliating fashion under regular order.”
Really, liberals need better appreciation for distinctions than such a remark shows.
What, after all, has been “humiliated” here? If anything, it’s the strategy and tactics by which a public option was supposed to come into the legislation, and not the public option itself which, whatever else happens, remains just as valid and worthy as it ever has been.
To consider that the public option itself has suffered a humiliation–to needlessly concede such a flawed view —is to practice a version of the very same logic by which supposedly intelligent people previously argued that, while it may have been a terrible mistake to have invaded Iraq, once there, we have “no choice but to stick to things and see them through”.
It’s very curious how, in a supposed democracy, we find ourselves so often with “no choice but to do” such-and-such a thing.
Lieberman wants something from somebody, either Reid or Obama. He may want assurance from Obama that he won’t actively support the Democratic nominee in Connecticut in ’12. He may even want Obama’s support should he run again for the Democratic nomination. But Lieberman never does anything on principle. It’s all about Joe.
I think we should seriously consider the idea that Lieberman knows he CANNOT be reelected. Lieberman is extremely unpopular with Democrats in CT and quite unpopular with independents. The Dems could easily strip him of his committee chairmanships, then his seniority wouldn’t even mean anything. (Aside from being Chmn of Homeland Security, he is also Chairman of the AirLand Subcommittee of the Armed Services Committee, and sits on the Subcommittee on Seapower and the Subcommittee on Personnel.) He could join the GOP but then he would also lose, assuming they would even nominate him. Unfortunately when someone knows he’s not reelectable, he can try and be as destructive as he wants, because at least in that department there are no consequences.
I am also sure there will be great organized opposition in CT to Lieberman’s position on health care, which is not only deeply against CT public opinion but also goes back on his election promises. It’s not clear what organized, outraged CT citizens could accomplish on this, besides making it even more impossible for Lieberman to run for reelection. I don’t think even Obama would be “conciliatory” enough to campaign for Lieberman under these circumstances.
So if it’s going to come down to hardball, the question is, what have the Dems got on Lieberman? His committee and suvcommittee chairmanships. How much does he care about them? I wonder. Let’s hope that’s not the only thing they’ve got on the little son of a bitch.
Lieberman lying on October 23, 2006, while campaigning against Ned Lamont:
.
August interview:
Without public option, health reform would pass (35 min.)
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Two points. “Medikids” is just S-CHIP with the age limit raised from 22 to 25. Hardly Holy Joe’s idea.
Also, we federal employees have many fine choices available to us, it is true. But, ALL THE CHOICES ARE GOING UP IN COST FASTER THAN INFLATION EVERY YEAR. What good would it do for everyone to be able to by into our insurance, even with our 75% subsidy, if the rate to the employee is say $2000 a month after subsidy? And where does the subsidy money for everyone in the country come from if the subsidy for 10% of the population for the public option is too much? OK, that was a third point and I know you wouldn’t believe Joementum anyway.
I disagree. If Lieberman can be persuaded at the end (aka “inches from the president’s desk”) then he could be persuaded after two months of debate with the whole reform issue on the line. I also think that if Lieberman did go kamikaze to blow it up, Reid and Obama would simply keep Congress in session long enough to pass the reconciliation version. That is, if their hearts are really in it. And that’s what we’re really gonna find out in all of this.
This is why I am not as concerned. Look the Dems know something, anything needs to pass or they are quite dead. They are not going to give up on the issue because this is all they’ve got. This will keep the backbone for the rest of them strong enough no matter what happens.
Maybe this thing needs to crash and burn and fail miserably. And after that happens, the shithead Democrats in the Senate might come to realize that the future of the whole party (and the nation) looks really grim if they don’t get a decent healthcare bill passed. It might require a second bite at the apple.
Actually, healthcare means shit compared to climate change. The Future of the whole WORLD is really grim if we don’t get a handle on our carbon.
If we fail at healthcare reform, 2010 is down the tubes, and we will probably lose the House.
We need to do this bill, and we cannot wait. The notion that a redo will produce a better bill indicates that you simply don’t know very much about politics. It’s 15 years since Clintoncare, and it would take 20 years for Dems to get back to it.
That’s not acceptable.
We need this bill now.
Now Lieberman has taken over for President Snowe. So we’ll water down the bill to nothing to please Joe.
We’ll be damn lucky if we get any po at all.
I’m just furious about this cluster—- while 44,000 people are dying waiting for hcr. And while we’re screwing around with this the insurance thieves will double our premiums while they still can.
Reid did this strictly for show because of his re election problems. All the democrats need to do in both the House and Senate is stand up as a group and say they will not pass hcr WITHOUT a robust po. If it fails then so be it. Better than some crappy bill with mandatess forcing us to buy from the ins. thieves.
inmho.
Booman, I agree with you 100%.
Question: Since it seems that our only route to success, barring a Lieberman change of heart, lies in adding a trigger and dropping the opt-out, how do we get Progressives (and HCR activists) on board?
It amazes me that there are some of us who would prefer no bill at all, to incremental change (and a bill that could be improved upon in the near future). IMHO, more lives saved trumps ideology every time. Unfortunately, those who have dominated the discourse on HCR, fundamentally believe that Obama is lying about his support for the PO. How we can change that underlying belief? If Obama draws a line in the sand in support of the PO, Snowe won’t fall for his support of a senate bill with the trigger, because she’ll know that he only wants the bill to pass so that the PO can be added in conference. On the other hand, if Obama doesn’t draw a line in the sand, can you see a way for Progressives to unite around this strategy, especially since it involves replacing the opt-out PO with a triggered PO.
It amazes me that Democratic Senators are so out of touch with their constituents.
All of the reforms to create universal coverage (restriction on pre-existing conditions, rating, rescissions, annual and lifetime caps) will increase insurance company costs and rather than sacrifice profits, they will raise premiums. There goes affordability.
Individual mandates will increase insurance company revenue, especially among low-risk persons, but insurance companies will not pass savings on in reductions to premiums. Individual mandates to buy into a crappy insurance system (i.e. the Baucus bill) is a prescription for electoral disaster.
A public option that will benchmark costs based on Medicare rates can establish competition in a market that is built on an anti-trust exemption. That is the only way short of single-payer to get to affordable coverage. Compromising this with opt-outs or triggers or forcing the public plan to build a provider network from scratch kills affordability to the point that realistic subsidies would come in far above the $900 billion target that Obama has established for deficit-neutrality. Subsidies that too low even with a public plan create a political problem if there are individual mandates.
Political gamesmanship is fine to speculate about but a crappy bill will destroy Democrats at the polls in 2010. And failure to get a bill will destroy the Democratic majority for another generation. And the first to go will be the very people who are demanding the most compromise.
Lieberman has said that he is totally opposed to a government insurance company (i.e. a public plan). That means that he will filibuster a conference bill as well, if he is serious. It sounds like Reid is going to call his bluff. The key to this is not allowing the public option to be stripped out. And getting out the cots and blankets and handing Joe the transcript of Strom Thurmond’s marathon session to read.
If we’re gonna play chicken, it is time for the progressives to toss the steering wheel out of the car. I don’t believe that that has as much electoral risk as either a crappy bill or allowing Lieberman or other Conservadems to kill the bill.
from the New York Times,
October 28, 2009
Democrats Divided Over Reid Proposal for Public Option
By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN and ROBERT PEAR
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/28/health/policy/28health.html?hpw=&pagewanted=print
…”The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said that in his view a vote to debate the legislation would be tantamount to supporting it, which he said would raise taxes and increase health care costs.”
“Such a vote, Mr. McConnell said, “will be treated as a vote on the merits of the bill.”
I have to agree with existenz and several other commenters above. If Joe Lieberman wants to pull crap like this now, then I don’t see what prevents him from pulling the same crap after the House-Senate conference, when the bill is “inches away from Obama’s pen,” as you put it.
The heart of the matter is, as someone above pointed out, that we don’t know Lieberman’s true motivations. If he is running again, this whole business is political suicide in blue CT. If he’s not running again, then what leverage do we have? Would he care about losing his committee chairs, or his place in the Democratic caucus?
What does the man actually want?
If it’s just something to salve his ego, then Reid & Obama can probably come up with something to do that. If he just wants attention, they can let him go on for a while, get interviews, and his lust will probably be sated (or people will get bored). If he wants an actual concession of some kind, then they can assess it and either try to accomodate him or beat the living hell out of him politically. If he plans on becoming an insurance industry lobbyist, then we are screwed, but we would’ve been the same screwed — in fact, probably even worse screwed — had this happened in November/December.
In the end, I think Democrats recognize that if they fail to pass a health care bill, it will be political suicide for the entire party. So if for some reason this doesn’t work — and I’m not certain about that — they will go for reconciliation. They will say that “56 Senators wanted this bill to pass, the House passed it, and it was blocked by the party of No and special interest mongers, so we had to do what was right and necessary to safeguard the welfare of the American people.” And it will play quite nicely for the 2010 midterms.
the most obvious difference is that right now the holdout senators can expect to win concessions, but at the end of the process it’s too late for that.
a less obvious difference is that during the debate over the bill and the amendments, senators lock themselves in by making comments on the floor and in the press, which are hard to walk back later.
So, the best strategy is to wait until the very last moment to have the vote on a public option.
Obama knew he couldn’t win in Finance, so he simply started to say that it wasn’t crucial. That allowed the PO to lose there without it being a loss for the WH. They didn’t lean on people only to see the thing defeated anyway. That was smart.
The next roadblock would have been an amendment (by unanimous consent, needing 60 votes to pass) for the public option to be put in the bill. That was going to be an unavoidable loss, but it would demonstrate majority support for the PO, setting up its possible inclusion in Conference, or its inclusion in reconciliation. The trick there would be to keep Democratic opponents from being too rigid in their opposition.
By putting the PO in the base bill, if the base bill fails, it does real damage to the argument for putting it in in reconciliation. But, more importantly, if it fails, you never get to Conference.
T