Ezra has been talking to staffers on the Hill, which is something I have not been doing for several months now. I’ve been preoccupied. So, I put a lot of stock in what Ezra has to say when he talks about the mood of the Democratic caucus. He made a point in his piece today that hadn’t occurred to me. One reason the Democrats don’t want to revive the public option is because it would basically constitute a broken promise and that is not something Harry Reid wants to do if he plans on being able to retain his position and effectiveness as Majority Leader:
Caucus politics present another dilemma: The public option died due to the opposition of Nelson, Landrieu, Lincoln, Lieberman and a handful of other conservative — and vulnerable — Democrats. Reid cut a deal with them, and they signed onto the final product. For many, that was a big political risk. The price was letting them say they killed the public option. Bringing it back to the bill will mean they voted for a bill that ended up including something they’d promised their constituents they’d killed. Cross them on this and you’ve lost their trust — and thus their votes — in the future.
It’s actually a kind of depressing realization, but I fear Ezra is right here. Of course, one of the advantages of using the reconciliation process in the first place is that it allows some red-state Democrats to vote against the bill. But, I don’t know that it would help a Blanche Lincoln or a Ben Nelson to vote against the health care bill now that they’ve already voted for it once. It seems to me that that would create a kind of worst-of-both-worlds type of situation where the base is upset and the opponents still can argue truthfully that they voted to pass a health care bill that has x, y, and z problems with it.
I don’t know exactly what Reid promised to get those 60 votes on Christmas Eve, and I don’t know if resuscitating the public option would cause a rift, with some members feeling they had been betrayed. But I think it’s a possible explanation for why Jay Rockefeller and Robert Gibbs say that the Democrats don’t have the votes to pass the public option. The other possibility is that it doesn’t make any sense to talk about a public option prior to the health care summit, since bringing it up undermines the whole point of the summit, which is to show a willingness to compromise on the Senate version of the bill, not to ram home something even stronger than what we can’t pass right now under regular order.
So, after the Republicans react with a bunch uncooperative nonsense, the rhetoric will change. How much will it change? I wish I knew.
