Monday Morning in Massachusetts

There is plenty of Monday morning quarterbacking going on after Scott Brown (R-MA) won the Massachusetts Senate-seat of the late Ted Kennedy (D-MA). I am seeing post after post of what this means for Democrats, what this means for Republicans, and what this means for the health care legislation that is currently pending in Congress.

I wanted to share a couple of viewpoints that I thought were insightful and productive in moving this discussion forward. The first is from Jon Walker over at Firedoglake. He argues that Democrats simply cannot run on Republican obstructionism and expect to win. They have to do something productive:

Democrats control everything in Washington right now. They control the White House. They have a huge margins in the House and in the Senate. Democrats have larger margins in both chambers than any party has had for decades. They have zero excuses for failing to deliver. Americans will not find some nonsense about having only 59 Senate seats as an acceptable excuse for failing to accomplish anything. If Democrats think they can win in 2010 by running against Republican obstructionism, they will lose badly.

[...]

The party in power must run on their accomplishments and point to those accomplishments as a down payment on other promises they will fullfill if they are allowed to stay in power. You must deliver something to the voters and hope they like it. If Democrats can’t run on their record of passing legislation that makes positive change in people’s lives, they will suffer terribly in 2010.

Though this point seems obvious, I am seeing post after post that fails to acknowledge this point. Candidates in the Democratic Party ran on change and they ran on running Washington in a different way. When health care reform gets sold out to lobbyists and big Pharma, it is obvious that nothing "new and different" is being accomplished. Is it any shock that this is a contributing factor to the loss of this Senate-seat?

I also want to point your attention to Jane Hamsher's piece from earlier today:

Unless the Democrats move aggressively to right the perception that they are the party of backroom deals and massive corporate bailouts, 2010 will be more of the same. But there will certainly be no shortage of those ready to extract the wrong lessons from the Coakley loss.

Joe Lieberman, Mr. 31%, says it’s a sign that people “don’t like all the partisanship and deal-making here in Washington” and that “they’re really skeptical about this health care bill.” He doesn’t mention that it’s his health care bill they don’t like, or the fact that the bill was made unpopular as the price of his vote.

A new FDL/SurveyUSA poll of NY-01 shows how Lieberman’s bill is affecting the race in that district, one of many that the Democrats are at risk of losing in the next election. Incumbent Tim Bishop would have a narrow lead over GOP challenger Randy Altschuler if the race were held today in a contest that was rated “lean Democratic” by Cook’s Political Report.

People were pretty evenly split when asked if they supported a bill with a mandate to buy private insurance, with 50% saying it’s a good idea and 44% saying it’s a bad idea. Support fell dramatically when they were told that they would be fined up to 2% of their income for failure to comply, with 40% saying it’s a good idea and 57% saying it’s a bad idea. But when the option to buy into a government-run Medicare program was added, 63% of likely voters (66% of independents) supported it and 33% opposed even with the fine. Even support among Republicans shot up 23%.

People are skeptical of this health care bill, but it should not be interpreted that people are skeptical of health care reform. The numbers that Hamsher points to are clear. People want real and meaningful reforms to the system. What people do not want is the status quo complete with more kickbacks to the insurance and pharmaceutical industries. This is what the Blue Dogs have pushed for and this is what the Obama Administration has compromised on.

The results of this election should indeed act as a wake-up call to the party, but it should not be a call to abandon all hope of meaningful legislative policy because they are scared to lose their seat. It should be a wake-up call to muster the political courage to adopt populist policies instead of staying aligned with the corporate interests who push for the status quo. If we continue to have more of the same, the political landscape is going to shift very rapidly and Massachusetts will be viewed as a precursor.

Republicans Don't Want Health Care Reform Yet the White House Still Strives for Bipartisan Support

From Karen Travers of ABC News (emphasis mine):

Health care dominated the morning briefing with White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, who denied reports that the White House and Democrats are giving up on a bipartisan reform bill.

“Absolutely not,” Gibbs said. “We continue to be hopeful that we can get bipartisan support and will continue to work with those that are interested in doing that.”

“Our goal is to get this done in a bipartisan way,” he said. “There are several more weeks to go in potential negotiations between Republicans and Democrats. I don’t know why we would short circuit any of that now.”

Is it insane to think that there will be any productive negotiations that will lead to getting health care done in a "bipartisan way"? I tend to think that when you have the Republicans on one side, obviously opposed to any type of health care reform, it is crazy to think that any type of negotiation will result in a health care bill that is the best piece of legislation that can be crafted for the good of the American people.

Glenn Greenwald has some thoughts on those who think it is insane:

That's obviously true. In fact, it's so obviously true that no matter how dumb one might think Democrats are, they're certainly not so dumb that they failed to realize that the GOP was highly unlikely to help Obama pass health care reform no matter what the bill contained. From the start, it's been obvious to everyone -- the Obama White House and Senate Democrats included -- that the GOP would not help Obama pass health care reform. Why would the GOP want to help Obama achieve one of his most important and politically profitable goals? Of course they were going to try to sabotage the entire project and would oppose health care reform no matter what form it took.

So the question practically begs itself. If President Obama and the White House are looking for robust reform and the Republicans have indicated that they are going to vote against any reform that is proposed, then why doesn't the White House exclude the Republicans and put pressure on the Blue Dogs in order to get the legislation passed?

Again, Glenn Greenwald:

The attempt to attract GOP support was the pretext which Democrats used to compromise continuously and water down the bill. But -- given the impossibility of achieving that goal -- isn't it fairly obvious that a desire for GOP support wasn't really the reason the Democrats were constantly watering down their own bill? Given the White House's central role in negotiating a secret deal with the pharmaceutical industry, its betrayal of Obama's clear promise to conduct negotiations out in the open (on C-SPAN no less), Rahm's protection of Blue Dogs and accompanying attacks on progressives, and the complete lack of any pressure exerted on allegedly obstructionists "centrists," it seems rather clear that the bill has been watered down, and the "public option" jettisoned, because that's the bill they want -- this was the plan all along.

This is precisely why the Progressives drawing the proverbial "line in the sand" is so important. They have the numbers to defeat the Blue Dog Coalition's influence on watering-down and "compromising" on this legislation. The key is that the Progressive Coalition needs to continue hold their ground on the public option and force the Democratic Party to stand up to the interests that are hell-bent on protecting the status quo.

Can We Stop Calling Co-ops a Compromise?

As the Republicans continue to resist any type of public option, we are now seeing revived talk of replacing a robust public option with co-ops. This has led the language of the debate to shift and reference these co-ops as a "compromise" (emphasis all mine below).

Ezra Klein:

This is a dynamic we saw in 1994. A compromise is offered, and after great anguish and infighting, Democrats grudgingly move toward it. Then the compromise is yanked away. The famous example of this is Bob Dole voting against two bills that had the name "Dole" in the title. We'll see the same sort of thing this year. The end-of-life counseling hubbub, where Democrats got attacked for approving an amendment that Republicans had frequently offered, is another example. It's one more reminder that the likeliest compromise will be between liberal Democrats and centrist Democrats, along with Olympia Snow and Susan Collins.

The Washington Independent:

Republicans and conservative activists are mining other statements in that vein to build the case that co-ops would be no compromise at all, and they’re doing it quickly.

“Three months ago, I think you could have had a compromise on co-ops,” another Senate GOP aide told TWI. “Today? No, forget about it. I think both parties have gotten wise to how things work, and Republicans see this for the fig leaf that it really is.”

A Headline from The Faster Times:

Republicans Capitalize on Democratic Disarray as Hopes of Health Care Compromise Fade

The compromise is not negotiating away the public option in favor of a (yet to be detailed) co-op plan. As Jane Hamsher has stated, The compromise IS the public option. Progressive activists have long maintained and continue to assert that the public option must be included because it was the compromise that was settled on once single-payer was taken off of the table.

More importantly, this initial compromise was primarily between progressives and more conservative members of the Democratic Party who didn't want to include the public option in the first place...not between Democrats and Republicans. Republicans have long been opposed to anything that has been proposed, from the public option to their new resistance to even the mention of co-ops.

It is quite clear that the Republicans do not want health care reform, they want a political defeat of President Obama and the Democrats. "Compromising" the public option out of the bill would simply be a move to appease those who will be opposed to any measure of meaningful reform. This is why progressives are so adamant on keeping the public option in a final version of the health care bill and why they are drawing a line in the sand around this issue. It is what Obama campaigned on and it is already a compromise down from single-payer.