I’m not going to argue that today’s events in Congress are a positive development. It appears that someone dropped the ball in managing Joe Lieberman’s ego and we’re going to wind up with a very weak (almost pathetic, really) health care bill from the Senate. In fact, even though it looks like they might have Lieberman back on board, it’s not completely clear to me that they’ll be able to convince the House to sign off on the piece of shit reform that will be coming their way. But let’s assume that something passes, and that it has some pretty strong health insurance reform elements.
One positive that we can take out of this is that Lieberman just provided a bit of a rallying cry and rationale for electing more Democratic senators. If we can net three or four more Democratic senators in the 2010 midterms, we won’t have to suffer through the kinds of senatorial vetoes that stymied the reform effort in this Congress. Without the high profile case study in the problem of non-majoritarian rule that Lieberman’s obstruction represents, it would be hard to make the case for even bigger congressional majorities. We do have some decent candidates in Missouri, Ohio, and New Hampshire who would give us the procedural votes we currently lack. It’s hard to say just yet whether we can improve our lot much by winning the seats in Kentucky and North Carolina, but we have primary contenders that are promising. I don’t think replacing David Vitter with Charlie Melanchon would do much for us, but it wouldn’t hurt.
Netting Senate seats is certainly not assured, but we at least have a clear reason to hope it happens and to work towards that goal. Losing Senate seats would really cripple the Obama administration, and that should also be painfully clear tonight.
I had one other positive in mind to write about, but it must not have been very important or convincing because I’ve forgotten what it was. That happens when DC is in the process of crushing your hopes and aspirations. But, it’s true that we really were only two or three votes shy of passing a damn good health care bill.