Republicans find themselves on perilous ground. According to a Washington Post-ABC poll, two thirds of respondents want Congress to keep working on health care reform — and a significant majority agree the GOP is the side that’s not being bipartisan enough. Obama refuses to define bipartisanship the way the GOP does, and apparently a majority of Americans agrees with him. Meanwhile, the GOP’s last hope — the Frankenstein creation of the Koch Family’s Faux Noise™ fear factory known as “the tea party movement” — is running at them from the right, and hard. Palin encouraged competitive
Meanwhile, Obama has put together his bipartisan health care summit, slated for February 25th, without giving up on reconciliation. Giving the White House press corps a surprise appearance, the president refused “preconditions” from the minority party:
Both Boehner and Cantor pushed for Obama to scrap the legislative language in its entirety and start the process over from scratch.
[...]
“I am going to be starting from scratch in the sense that I will be open to any ideas that help promote these goals,” he said. “What I will not do, what I don’t think makes sense… will be another year of partisan wrangling around these issues, another six months, or eight months, or nine months worth of hearings in every single committee in the House and Senate in which there is a lot of posturing… Let’s get the relevant parties together… My hope is we can find enough overlap that we can say, ”This is the right way to move forward,’ even if we don’t get every single idea that I want.”
I’ll break that down for you:
- Obama refuses to kill the bill.
- He has limited patience, but still wants to talk.
- Most importantly, he maintains the right to change his mind (i.e., he says he’s still open-minded).
The job ain’t done, but this means Obama has perfect ground for the endgame. The pieces are in place for a discussion that lets Obama make the case for the public option and the Senate bill in a forum where opponents cannot ignore the argument for them. Moreover, press fact-checking works to his advantage. This is his opportunity to change the game in Washington.
In other words, flawless victory is not assured, but epic victory is possible.
The president’s plan was to arrange a debate on the merits of the bill and explain how it impacts every American. He’ll probably talk about the deficit-reduction aspects of HCR and the overall cost-reduction for taxpayers. Expect him to offer a reality check on tort reform, or perhaps a diversion like special medical courts, and then say something like:
I will use reconciliation if I you make me. I have asked for bipartisanship and gotten little cooperation. This is still America and the majority rules. Somehow we keep coming back to this idea that 49 Senators are more powerful than 51, or that forty beats sixty, or like just the other day, that thirty-three Senators can beat fifty-two. I used to be a professor of constitutional law, but I have yet to see evidence the founding fathers had this situation in mind. Everyone wants to be against earmarks until I’ve got defense and national security appointees on the line, and then suddenly the mandate for change that came with our last election goes away. Everyone says they want to do something about soaring health care costs, and I get good ideas from you all — and they’re all in this bill — but you say you still won’t vote for it.
The American people still want comprehensive reform, they want lower costs, they are tired of us not getting the job done, and that problem is on both sides of the aisle but mainly in one house. We’ve got a lot to do and they are tired of these stalling tactics.
One thing I expect he will absolutely not mention is that he already has the votes to pass a public option in the Senate via an up-or-down vote. A public option is the one piece of legislation you could pass via filibuster and then watch the House pass the Senate bill the next day. My quick polling tells me the left will call this a victory, and my attention to general polling tells me the public will react positively…then immediately pivot to something else.
One thing more progressives need to learn about 11-Dimensional Chess is the difference between a win and a victory. Harry Reid had this whip-count when he put together the Senate bill. That moment told you that this path was fore-ordained, but Obama just needed an excuse for passing a bill; it was always possible to pass a public option via reconciliation later.In the meantime, the party of no has managed to slow down the entire reform agenda…and that is the point of consensus politics. It is a non-violent form of the golden science in which the wheat separates from the chaff.
There’s a reason we refer to the ends of wars by the letter V and not W. Progressives should also understand the difference between a victory and a campaign; 2010 is an ongoing campaign for an agenda of progress to the center. More importantly, progressives must understand that we are the first dimension of the eleven dimensional chess game. Here’s Obama at a New Hampshire town hall the other day, with Greg Sargent’s take:
“It is the right thing to do for America,” Obama continued. “You need to let your members of Congress know they shouldn’t give up, they should keep pushing to make it happen.”
That smacks a bit of F.D.R.’s famous line: “Now go out and make me do it.” Except Obama is saying, “Go out there and make them do it.”
Those who want Obama to push Congress harder in a specific direction — getting the House to pass the Senate bill, for instance — will be disatisfied by this, and will see it as another sign that he’s fobbing reform off on Congress.
But Obama is inviting the public to keep up the pressure on their members — implicitly ratcheting up the pressure himself. Bottom line: He just didn’t sound like someone who has given up on getting this done in an ambitious and comprehensive way. (Emphasis mine)
We would not be here without a full year of Republican intransigence, blue dog interference, or that first dimension. We the progressives made that magic number happen.
This pattern is beginning to repeat itself. After a month of worries about Chris Dodd, it turns out the rumors of a Consumer Finance Protection Agency being dead were all about Richard Shelby, and Dodd is prepared to go it alone on the issue. Nancy Pelosi is finally going to stick the knife in with symbolic votes.
The GOP has earned this moment, and well may it serve them as they lose. And lose. And lose. And keep losing — while the teabaggers divide into third parties and give up on them.
H/t to Political Carnival and the Washington Independent for the last graphic.
