From reporting I’ve read, Rahm Emanuel did not want to tackle health care at all. He wanted to focus on jobs. That was a recomendation that didn’t sit well with progressives, and they criticized Emaunel for it incessantly. But, now that the midterms turned out not to go well for the Democrats, suddenly it is fashionable for progressive critics to take Emauel’s side of the argument.
Health care reform remains at the root of this chaos. Obama has never explained why a second-tier priority for him in the 2008 campaign leapt to the top of his must-do list in March 2009. For much of the subsequent year spent fighting over it, he still failed to pick up the narrative thread. He delayed so long in specifying his own priorities for the bill that his opponents filled the vacuum for him, making fictions like “death panels” stick while he waited naïvely for bipartisanship to prevail. In 2010, Obama and most Democrats completed their transformation of a victory into a defeat by running away from their signature achievement altogether.
Here’s a new rule. If you were angry with Rahm for not having his heart in the fight for health care reform, then you can’t criticize the president for ignoring his advice.
that’s not quite right Booman. I’m mad at Rahm and Obama for not whipping the conservative dems on health care. Again, this idea of either JOBS or HEALTHCARE is ridiculous. We had 60 votes in the senate and the wind at our sails- our biggest enemy wasn’t the choices we made- it was sabbateurs like Lieberman, Nelson and Lincoln who thought they could gain politically (at the expense of Obama and the party) by trying to slow the president’s agenda. Way back in August 2009 Obama and Rahm needed to get the 5 or so conservative dems who were sending signals that they were n’t going to be team players on healthcare and cut what ever deal needed to be done. And then once those deals were cut, everyone plays nice- no public disagreement, no filibuster threats, just smooth sailing. Isn’t cutting deals and whipping hard votes what Rahm was famous for? Knowing the pressure points, the wish lists of every legislator to get it done? that’s where those guys blew it. I’ve read a lot of stuff on the interwebs about how Obama was too involved in Congress and legislation his first 2 years and that’s half-right. I think what he failed to do was assess whether his caucus was going to be team players or not. It wasn’t that he was too deferential to Congress as an institution (I agree, they write the laws) but he was too deferential to opposing members in his own caucus. He doesn’t control congress, but he is his party’s leader. I think on health care if the 5 or conservative dems were telling Obama that they weren’t going to be team players (ie, threaten to filibuster) then you either nip that in the bud very early in the process or you could bait and move on to jobs. that’s where Obama lost his grip on things and they started to unravel.
That’s all fine, but it doesn’t address the sudden prevalence of a progressive critique about the decision to tackle health care at all.
I guess I’m trying to read between the lines a bit and get what is really behind that critique. I think what’s behind that is the idea that Obama shouldn’t have done Health Care if he was going to let it play out that way. So if you accept that the conservative dems are more powerful than the president and that the senate as an institution is incapable of passing progressive legislation, no matter what, then you probably come to the conclusion that Obama should have gone jobs first. I’m just saying that dichotomy is oversimplistic and glosses over a valid critique of Obama: that politically (not in terms of policy), he fumbled his main initiative on health care, and that political fumble, prevented him from making headways on the policy front in jobs.
Rahm fits in on this since controlling the politics is part of his job description. He shouldn’t really have a say on health care legislation other than in being able to say what Nelson’s top ask is. There’s much smarter folks who know how various pieces improve care, lower the deficit, etc.
I wonder if they are looking for things to complain about and happened to land on healthcare.
Also, Clinton failed healthcare in 1993 and if some of these progressives want Hillary Clinton as president, Obama getting healthcare done is just plain wrong. In some odd way it makes sense.
Progressives are full of contradictions.
In December 2009, Obama got Nelson’s vote only by agreeing to foot Nebraska’s health care costs 100%, indefinitely. It smacked so much of bribery when the public got wind of it, Nelson had to give it back. If Obama had made this deal in August of ’09, we would be criticizing him for capitulating to his own Senator without a fight. I fault Obama for many things, but I don’t think this is one of them.
I think you’re missing the point about how this works. Ben Nelson got the cornhusker kickback because for months he had threatened to filibuster, and that filibuster put the legislation on life-support, allowed the GOP to stir up opposition and the whole thing just became a giant sausage factory and the public was abhorred. If the deal was cut early, and Obama got Nelson, Bayh, Lincoln, Landreua and Lieberman to never even think of mouthing the words “filibuster” and “health care” in the same sentence, then the public never would have tuned in to what was going on in health care, other than the awesome goodies they were going to get.
Booman raises a good question that in hindsight, should we have done health care or jobs. My answer is that Obama should have gotten every conservative democractic senator who was considering filibustering and cut what ever deals needed to be done, then and there. No one would have noticed, no one would have cared. Nelson’s kickback abhorred people because HE WAS THREATENING TO KILL health care reform if he didn’t get his kickback and he was the last vote. The whole world was watching and Nelson, and Reid and Obama showed how ugly politics was. Politics is ugly but the job of the fixers like Rahm is to keep those deals from never seeing the light of day and safely in the back room.
Then I guess I’m missing something else, because your recommendation – that Obama gather the troublemakers together early on, find out what their price point was, give it to them, and avoid negative pushback against the bill, was exactly what he did with Pharma, the hospitals, etc. And many of us weren’t and still aren’t happy about it. The summer of unilateral disarmament was a huge mistake, along with many others. But I’m wary of falling into the mindset that Obama should have done the opposite of what he did because sometimes the opposite would have been just as problematic.
The difference is that big pharma, the health insurers are ON THE OTHER TEAM. They’re the bad guys and if you want to sit down and strike a deal with the bad guys where you say, give in now and we’ll go easy on you, I’m OK with that. But members of our own caucus, our own team, can’t be seen as disagreeing (or rather, if the other side is going to be unified, we have to be as well). Also, Big Pharma isn’t the 60th vote to break a filibuster- you don’t want to give Ben Nelson the chance to be that 60th vote when everything is all on the line because at that point he’s more powerful than the President. Point is, cut the deals when they don’t have all the leverage and the result won’t be so awful.
would have been useful. I know he isn’t popular among many progressives. I know he wasn’t as progressive as I would have liked but when he stepped down due to a tax controversy I felt it was a huge blow to health care reform efforts. He knew the senate and knew those senators. In the absence of Daschle it was up to Rahm to cut through the noise and make the deals that needed to be made. Had Daschle been there I think that would have happened a lot sooner so the President could have moved on.
And Rahm doesn’t know what Ben Nelson’s ask would be? I find that hard to believe, even if Rahm wasn’t in the Senate. Why? Because they are both DLC. So I am sure they are well aware of each other.
I still also believe Daschle shepherding the process through would have meant a lot smoother pasage of the bill. Rahm knew these guys but Daschle was truly their colleague and at one time their majority leader. He also knew health care reform inside and out. Even with his ideas that were less progressive than mine I believe he was the guy who whose knowledge and skill set were needed to get health care done in the fastest smoothest way possible.
I have just now started posting over here at Booman but the day he stepped down I posted on another message board that it was a huge blow and without his knowledge and expertise health care reform was going to turn into a huge mess. It may have with him there so I can’t say with certainity that it was him not being there but my belief is that it would have had a better chance of passing without some of the messiness had he been spearheading the effort.
I think your larger point is correct – that many progressives have switched gears somewhat by criticizing Obama now for spending time on health care – but I don’t know if it’s right to point to Frank Rich. I don’t recall him making that particular point.
On the other hand, I thought Rich’s column was pretty poor. He attempts to claim that his criticism goes beyond mere communication error, and points to governance as well. Then he spends the whole time talking about how Obama communicated poorly.
He finishes with two dopey ideas that would supposedly change the dynamic: insisting that GOP sketch spending cut ideas out on a blackboard and convening a public debate about expenditures. Rich doesn’t acknowledge the simple truth that Obama can’t force the GOP to take part in such public displays.
In my opinion, 1/3 of the criticism about Obama’s communication problem relies on impractical suggestions like Rich’s column, another 1/3 makes suggestions that Obama has actually employed and maybe the last 1/3 is on target. In the end, his critics fail because they fall back on the myth of the omnipotent president and don’t recognize that times have changed and the control that presidents exert over the media is not nearly as complete as it used to be.
Obama didn’t force Republicans to engage in the health care summit, but they did, it was televised, and It exposed their vacuity. I think a similar summit would be good for fiscal responsibility, though I’m not sure how much I trust Obama to stand up for us.
They would never agree to another summit precisely because the last one went so badly.
As I remember, progressive criticism about healthcare did not begin until April after th ARRA was passed. And the ARRA was supposed to be the jobs bill. Progressive criticism during the consideration of the ARRA was that it was too small and had not enough jobs spending and too much tax cuts. If Rahm was really interested in jobs, jobs, jobs, he should have strategized how to get a larger bill through.
The conventional wisdom after ARRA pased was that the next huge item was healtcare, which did not go to markup until May or June and by July was attracting the ire of progressives who saw the coming train wreck.
But why hold the actual politicians accountable when there are bloggers to scourge. Bad Doobie, Bad Bad Doobie.
“That was a recomendation that didn’t sit well with progressives, and they criticized Emaunel for it incessantly.”
That’s not what I remember, I remember a lot of bewilderment over why he was going for health insurance as opposed to more economic measures or climate (which is perhaps even more intertwined with the economy than health insurance in the medium term and certainly the long term).
Rahm didn’t want to tackle health care at all because he was traumatized by the Clinton administration’s failure and didn’t want to repeat that.
That is an accurate analysis. There might be some good reasons why Obama waited so long in specifying his priorities specifically, instead reciting his five principles over and over. But that statement is clearly what happened. And it allowed Blue Dogs to distance themselves from him, which legitimized the fear that the Republicans were whipping up with their lies and gave those lies credibility. The worst were the very Blue Dogs who lost. And now Jared Polis and the remaining Blue Dogs want to go down the same road by opposing Nancy Pelosi’s “San Francisco values”, er liberalism. They want Hoyer instead of Clyburn. They might be afraid that Clyburn and Van Hollen actually will whip them on votes. “Pretty little seat you got there, fellows. Wouldn’t want to lose it because you couldn’t get party help, would you.”