I’m glad that Jane Hamsher clarified her odd timeline because I couldn’t figure out why she was attributing a July article about events in January to February 2009. But she doesn’t quite address my point. She’s been arguing for quite some time that Rahm Emanuel has been secretly pushing to kill the triggerless public option (presumably at the behest of Barack Obama). Now, as I noted, Emaunel did float the idea of a trigger in an interview with the Wall Street Journal that took place in early July. Two days after that article appeared, Sam Stein published an article in the Huffington Post that cited a “source close to the administration.” That source claimed that Emanuel had been pushing a trigger all the way back in January. And that article has formed the basis for Hamsher’s use of Emanuel as a bogeyman who opposes a triggerless public option.
Now, this could easily become a dispute about something totally tangential to the main argument. I took issue with a blast email that Hamsher sent out that said the Senate was trying to kill the public option by introducing a trigger, which was something that Emanuel had been fighting for since January. I noted that Emanuel had not publicly discussed a trigger before July. I did my best to verify that claim before writing my response. I did not come across Sam Stein’s article during that process, but when Hamsher cited it in her defense, I noted that the piece wasn’t written until July and that it relied on an anonymous source close to the administration.
I want to be clear about something. I’m not arguing that Sam Stein is unreliable. I am saying that his source was not willing to go on the record and was not a member of the administration. Stein’s article was headlined: President Tries To Put Out Fire From Emanuel’s Health Care Remarks. The premise of the article was that that Emanuel’s remarks about a trigger quoted in the WSJ had been off-message, and that Obama wanted to reassure supporters of the public option that he wasn’t backing off his support for the measure. There were a lot of people who wanted to push-back on Emanuel, and any number of public option supporters ‘close to the administration’ could be expected to make the dispute personal. I don’t think Stein made up the quote, but I think using this anonymous source to concoct a blood-feud conspiracy theory is going out on a limb in a major way.
But this dispute about articles written in July about what might have happened in January is actually kind of beside the point. What’s really at issue is an interpretation of facts and events and intentions. For Hamsher, the real enemies of a triggerless public option are Barack Obama and his chief of staff Rahm Emanuel. In her worldview, Emanuel is a corporate-friendly centrist whose preferred outcome generally aligns with what Ben Nelson and Kent Conrad would like to see. Obama is like Czar Nicholas II in the thrall of Rasputin, allowing his chief adviser to undermine his campaign promises in the service of major insurance and pharmaceutical corporations. I find this view as unsophisticated as it is uncharitable.
Rahm Emanuel’s job is to understand process and count votes. He can cajole and offer certain sticks and carrots, but he ultimately has to understand what the best deal is that can be achieved. When the Obama administration took office in January, they did a preliminary whip count to find out where they stood in the Senate on their health care plan. They discovered that they didn’t have 60 votes for a triggerless public option and that they didn’t have enough Democratic votes on the Finance Committee to pass one. I think at that point Rahm Emanuel probably started thinking about compromises that might get the bill through the Senate. Initially, the Dems didn’t have anywhere near 60 reliable votes. Specter was still a Republican; Kennedy was generally unavailable; Byrd was in and out of the hospital, Burris’s appointment was held up; and Franken wasn’t seated until July. On top of that, several Democrats were indicating that they couldn’t support the health care plan the president used in the campaign. So, did Emanuel discuss triggers in January? It’s quite possible that he did. I am sure he discussed a variety of possible compromises that might garner the unanimous support of the Democratic Caucus as well as Specter, Snowe, Collins, and maybe more Republicans. The dispute is really over why Emanuel might have been discussing triggers back then, why he floated them in July, and why the administration has continued to discuss them up until today. Was it something they were fighting for? Or was it something they were hoping would sway the votes they needed to pass the health care reform through the Senate under regular order (at the 60-vote threshold)?
As the bill went to the Finance Committee, it became obvious that getting Olympia Snowe’s support might be critical to both passing something through the committee and getting a 60th vote. At that point, Sen. Kennedy was mortally ill. It was in that context that Emanuel went public with the trigger option. Was he trying to undermine the triggerless public option or merely bowing to political necessities?
One clue is that the administration allowed Speaker Pelosi to push a robust public option through the three House committee that had jurisdiction. No one in the administration dissuaded her from pushing for a robust public option to the very end, when it became obvious that she’d have to settle for negotiated rates. Still, the House passed a triggerless public option, which forced a lot of members to vote for a bill far more progressive than anything likely to ultimately pass through the Senate or become law. The idea was to pass the strongest possible public option in the House and use that as leverage in the Conference Committee. If the administration actually preferred a triggerless public option and were fighting for one, they wouldn’t have allowed Pelosi to endanger and discomfort so many of her most vulnerable members. In fact, it was precisely those members with the most to lose who were most indebted to Emanuel for their positions in Congress. He should have been attentive to their needs and spared them a tough vote if he really didn’t support the underlying legislation. That didn’t happen.
So, my disagreement with Hamsher is over motives and intentions, not over timelines. I am not a fan of Rahm Emanuel’s politics, but I see him as doing his best to pass the strongest possible health care reform in the service of the president. Hamsher sees him as secretly undermining strong reform. Her evidence is weak, unsubstantiated, and just doesn’t make a lot of sense.
