I haven’t been writing about health care reform since the Martha Coakley fiasco for three reasons. Number one is that our wonderful new son is taking both real and psychic energy away that I ordinarily use to write. I have no problem with that since the tradeoff is well worth it, but it does make it harder to produce blog product. The second reason is basic demoralization and frustration. I do my worst blogging when I’m really despondent or pissed off. The third reason is that I can’t get a read on what is going on. And without a read, I don’t have anything interesting to say.
Tom Harkin says that the House and Senate reached a deal two days before Coakley lost, and Kevin Drum is right that this should give us cause for optimism about the prospects for reconciliation. Buttressing that hope, Robert Gibbs told CNN today that we’re still on the five-yard line:
“We’re one vote in the House of Representatives from making health care reform a reality,” the White House press secretary said, positing a scenario where the House passed the version of the bill already passed by the Senate which President Obama would then sign into law.
But none of that squares up with some of the messaging coming from Rahm Emanuel.
With Mr. Obama’s health care overhaul stalled on Capitol Hill, Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, said in an interview that Democrats would try to act first on job creation, reducing the deficit and imposing tighter regulation on banks before returning to the health measure, the president’s top priority from last year.
So, I don’t know what to believe.
My first instinct, based on past history, is that any delay will be fatal to the health care bill as its prospects get worse every day closer we draw to election day. Yet, history isn’t always prologue, and there is something to be said for letting passions calm for a short time. Telling people that we’re moving on without giving up allows us to finally talk about something else. If negotiations go on feverishly behind the scenes, this outward calm could facilitate better progress. Are we really one vote away in the House? Are we really putting the whole thing on the back burner? I don’t know. I am not going to tell you that I do.
whom I trust believe Coakley was a disaster of a candidate–which begs the question, why the Chutzpah? Why did Coakley and the “machine” think she could walk into the job, after a Caribbean vacation and nasty cracks about the hockey rink in Fenway park?
The answer–a deep one–is related to the problems that all the old guard Dems are having right now. Either we wake up and nominate exciting progressives (primaried!) or we lose everything.
He ran against the health care bill. He ran as “41” and nothing else. Blaming Coakley lets the Obama administration off the hook for wasting their first year trying to pass a half-assed bill that they couldn’t even explain to the public.
…and be so damned tone-deaf with the attempt to legislate? If Obama wanted health care reform to pass he should never have quit campaigning. Sure, a near Great Depression II can take anybody off their game but their approach to health care reform has been almost totally backasswards. Apparently the strategy was to do it any way but the way that the Clintons tried it– without regard to popular dynamics or basic common sense.
All over the country, the Dem party is run by fools and time-serving dullards. Nowhere worse than MA, though. Well, perhaps NYC.
Sounds like fatherhood is taking your attention a bit and like you are enjoying it! Very cool, the little buggers have a wonderful way of grabbing the heart don’t they?
The LA times reports that HC is very much being worked on behind the scenes. I hope that is true. It seems best not to allow this to be hashed out in the media as we seem to lose that fight but maybe we can win the one that really matters.
Here’s a link to that LA Times article:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-na-healthcare-strategy31-2010jan31,0,4131123.story
The drop dead day is not election day, it is when the FY 2010 budget resolution expires. That resolution is the one that authorized healthcare reform to be pursued under reconciliation. My understanding is that the FY 2011 budget resolution supersedes it and unless that resolution also contains language authorizing reconciliation that reconciliation is removed as a procedure for getting the bill passed.
The FY 2011 budget supposedly comes out tomorrow. The budget resolution is targeted for April. Methinks if reconciliation is the method it will have to happen before April.
Tom Harkin has been remarkably unreliable for guaging passage of the bill. It has been much more difficult than he has publicly forecast. And the Coakley loss should not matter if they intend to use reconciliation for the parts that give the House heartburn. The so-called sidebar bill(s).
The big sticker is still the Stupak amendment. Replacing the Nelson amendment with the Stupak amendment most likely cannot be done through reconciliation.
Yep, Rahm’s quote in the NYT is a massive mixed message.
Your best move is to go have more daddy time with Finn and not bother about healthcare reform. It will or it won’t. It’s now in the category of political weather.
Personally, I’d like to believe that the WH and the Dems are working hard behind the scenes the way they should be and that people have finally learned to shut the fuck up and not shout all of the possible constructive (and, dare I dream, Progressive) ways forward at the top of their lungs.
A little stealthy misdirection and mum on the finer points of strategerizing their way through the reconciliation process is probably the best way to go at this point after a year of blathering and blowing themselves up at every turn.
stick with the baby. The intractable swamp of politics will still be with us when he’s grown up.
Best of luck with your kid. I hope he grows up healthy, happy and with a bright future.
Anyhow, someone wrote that the White House is letting Congress come to its senses when maybe they should be bringing them back to their senses themselves.
I continue to read new reports today that Obama is not communicating with the Congressional Democrats. Also that he wnats to do healthcare but his staff (including bully boy Rahm) wants to back off.
Poor Obama, bullied by Rahm! That seems about as likely as Bush Jr. spending his retirement translating urdu poetry.
Attempting to divine future by drawing implications from the words of DCs professional liars makes attempting to divine the state of the economy from hourly fluctuations on wall street seem like reliable methodology.
It took a long time after C arrived for me to give a crap about the posings of politicians. He’s nearly two now and I’m begining to sort-of-write semi-regularly again.
Doesn’t health care have to do with job creation in some ways?
Apparently, only rhetorically.