I’m sure I’m not alone in this. I receive emails from a guy named Mitch Stewart, of Obama’s “Organizing for America” organization pretty much every day. Today I’m being urged to contact my Senators (rich irony on that one) to support health care reform because insurance lobbyists are desperate to pull apart the bill and derail reform”. All I can say is that Mitch has a lot of damn gall to ask me to make that phone call.
The insurance lobbyists can rest easy, the Democrats have already done their work for them, while Obama has played a mostly passive public role while privately assisting the derailment of the bill every step of the way.
There’s a bit of a debate going on about whether this bill is worth passing. It may very well be, that overall, the country will be somewhat better off with the bill than without it. That’s what the policy wonks say, but they’re only looking at the impact on the health care system. If the passage of this bill leads to the derailment of the Democratic party then a marginally better health care system will be cold comfort.
The Democrats have painted themselves into an impossible situation. If they don’t pass the bill the Republicans will crow about it and the Democrats will be perceived (and rightly so) as incompetent pushovers. If they do pass the bill they will create a political backlash among those most affected by it, e.g., young people forced to pay for worthless insurance, while those most benefited will be predominantly people who don’t vote anyway. Either way they lose.
Had the Democrats held a meeting this past January and tried to come up with a sure fire way to achieve minimal reform while destroying their own party in the process, they could not have come up with a better plan.
Here’s what you do:
1. Have the president raise the hopes of your base by initially talking up a reasonably good public option.
2. Start the bidding with a proposal you think you might be able to sell to Republicans, thus assuring the insurance companies from the start that the eventual bill will be a weak one, and signaling that you can be steamrolled into giving up more.
3. Take reconciliation off the table.
4. Hand the bill over to Max Baucus, who proceeds to freeze his fellow Democrats out of the process while “compromising” with Republicans all to get an unnecessary vote to get the bill out of committee from a person who will, in the end, vote to maintain a filibuster. As an added touch, encourage Max to slow walk (and that term overstates the pace) the bill through committee, knowing full well that every day you waste is another opportunity for the opposition to build up steam.
5. Get your base’s hopes up once again by inserting the public option back in the bill after it emerges, battered and beaten, from Baucus’s death grip.
6. Then let the loathsome Joe Lieberman get his petty revenge on his former party by visibly caving to his every demand, while still not getting a commitment that he will even vote for anything.
Result: an embittered base and a lousy bill.
After all that, I’m supposed to get excited enough about this piece of crap to call my Senator (joke again) to urge its passage? Even after all this I’m not convinced the Democratic Party is a fit candidate for assisted suicide, so I decline to get involved.
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