Could Obama Have Sold the Public Option

post from FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right on 21 December 2009 08:25:00 AM. © FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right

Wisconsin senator Russ Feingold says the White House wasn't helpful when it came to the public option:

I've been fighting all year for a strong public option to compete with the insurance industry and bring health care spending down. I continued that fight during recent negotiations, and I refused to sign onto a deal to drop the public option from the Senate bill. Unfortunately, the lack of support from the administration made keeping the public option in the bill an uphill struggle.

Note that Feingold does not say that the White House "killed" the public option; he just says their lack of support was unhelpful.

As I've argued here before, I think the defeat of the public option was a fairly robust outcome. That is, I don't think that if you went back in time and made relatively minor, random changes to the parameters the Senate was facing, you'd have wound up with a public option in the bill very often.

The role of Joe Lieberman, for instance, may be somewhat overstated. He may have killed the Medicare buy-in -- but not the public option per se, where there were at least 3-4 strong nos. Nor is it clear that the Medicare buy-in had ever secured 59 votes for passage. Ben Nelson, for instance, was a problem there, as might have been a handful of other Democrats.

And in so far as the more robust versions of the public option went, the Senate was never particularly close. The robust, Rockefeller-type public option failed 8-15 in the Senate Finance Committee and did not have the votes in the House; the semi-robust Schumer-type public option failed 10-13 in the Finance Committee and barely passed the House.

But what about more major changes to the the landscape the Senate was facing? As I argued back in June, I think it would have behooved the White House to take a more publicly and manifestly "hands-on" approach with the health care bill. The political lesson of the stimulus was that outsourcing the salesmanship of key legislation to the Congress, a highly unpopular institution, is likely to result in both less liberal and less popular policy than if the legislation is championed by the White House -- which was a highly popular institution at the time the health care debate began.

The White House, indeed, may have overlearned the lessons of the Clintons, whom conventional wisdom holds took too obstinate a position with the Congress. Or, they might have overestimated the extent which they could "quarantine" the legislation in the Congress. Suppose that the White House anticipated that the health care legislation was going to become somewhat unpopular. OK, so you dump it on the Congress, and let Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid take the hit, while Obama remains above the fray. The problem with this is that Obama can't remain completely out of the way, and the more you put Congress in charge, the less popular the legislation will have become when you do encounter it again. (Sorry for the crude metaphor, but it's a bit like a sexually transmitted disease that you pass on to a one-night stand, only to catch it again in a new, more virulent form when you sleep with the same person some months later.) In other words, by not willing to spend enough political capital on health care legislation, Obama may in the end have cost himself more political capital, because the negotiating process was dragged out and the final product made less popular.

There are others who would say that this was just the way it was going to have to be -- Congress is the more powerful institution than the Executive by some margin, and it gets pretty territorial, particularly when it comes to legislation as important and complex as health care. And the White House did, after all, end up with a good result -- it appears as though it will get a pretty good health care bill passed, something no Administration has done before.

This counter-argument is perfectly reasonable. But complex processes like this can oftentimes be fairly path dependent, and a White House that had been even marginally more proactive early in the process could have made some difference. I don't think the White House could have done very much, on the other hand, to "save" the public option late in the process.

Of course, we're talking mostly about about how the White House sold -- or failed to sell -- the health care legislation to the public, and not necessarily the substance of the policy. Still, part of the public consists of liberals, and it was clear very early on that the public option was a particular fixation of certain liberals and progressives. If the White House was not willing to put a lot of political capital behind the public option, if it had calculated early on that the defeat of the public option was inevitable, it seems to me that it could nevertheless have done a better job of preparing liberals for the defeat, or selling them on the other virtues of the health care bill. Instead, there was a bit too much reliance on trial balloons and backchannel communication, a poor fit for a perceptive progressive blogosphere that seeks greater honesty, openness and transparency.

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http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/12/could-obama-have-sold-public-option.html

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Summary of the health care bill

post from AMERICAblog News on 21 December 2009 08:20:00 AM. © AMERICAblog News

McJoan at DailyKos goes through the highlights of the bill for us, the good, the bad and the ugly.

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Your Abbreviated Pundit Round-up

post from Daily Kos on 21 December 2009 08:16:27 AM. © Daily Kos

Monday after-the-storm punditizing. is there more clean-up to do after the snow or after the vote?

Paul Krugman:

Unless some legislator pulls off a last-minute double-cross, health care reform will pass the Senate this week. Count me among those who consider this an awesome achievement. It’s a seriously flawed bill, we’ll spend years if not decades fixing it, but it’s nonetheless a huge step forward.

It was, however, a close-run thing. And the fact that it was such a close thing shows that the Senate — and, therefore, the U.S. government as a whole — has become ominously dysfunctional.

Senate dysfunctionality is an under-recognized theme of importance. In fact...

Greg Dworkin (Arena):

The Senate is on the verge of passing health care reform for the first time in decades. The House has a better bill, and committee awaits. While it isn’t everything, it’s something. Those who prematurely wrote off health reform simply got it wrong. Those who recognize how dysfunctional the Senate has become got it exactly right. But as many commenters have noted, the vibrant discussion has been on the center-left as to how to proceed, while the right has had only "death panels, socialized medicine and Hitler". No new ideas, no part in the discussion. Self-exile is painful to watch, and bad for the country. This could have been a better bill with Republican input. Instead, Eric Cantor disease has spread to the Senate, and "Just Say No" substitutes for policy discussion. It’s sad, and it’s also not going to help Republicans get back in power.

and
Thomas E. Mann:

The much-pilloried Harry Reid led an increasingly undemocratic and dysfunctional institution to a stunning victory for the majority party. He deserves an apology from any number of prominent Washingtonians. His House counterpart, Nancy Pelosi, burnished her reputation as one of the most powerful and effective Speakers in the history of Congress. Together they succeeded in unifying a fractious party representing diverse constituencies and rightfully fearful of the electoral consequences of their action or inaction.

Dana Milbank:

Going into Monday morning's crucial Senate vote on health-care legislation, Republican chances for defeating the bill had come down to a last, macabre hope. They needed one Democratic senator to die -- or at least become incapacitated.

Jonathan Chait:

Does the Republican Party have any ideas? ...

In reality, both parties have plenty of ideas that they would like to implement if given the political power to do so. Republicans’ policy ideas primarily involve cutting marginal tax rates and regulations. The question isn’t whether the Republican Party has any ideas. The question is whether the party has any relevant ideas.

Karen Tumulty:

But there is one question about the process that people are likely to be debating for years: Did the road to passage really have to be this rocky? The shape of the legislation — and specifically, the fact that there were never going to be 60 votes in the Senate for a government-run public option — has been clear for months. So why did Reid insist upon taking the public option to the Senate floor as part of the initial bill he introduced, making the fight even messier and at times seriously jeopardizing Dems' chances of passing such a landmark bill?

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it-Round-up

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Prisoner Abuse Legislative Fix Introduced

post from TalkLeft on 21 December 2009 08:13:00 AM. © TalkLeft

Last week, Congressman Bobby Scott (D-VA) reintroduced his Prisoner Abuse Remedies Act. As the New York Times opines today, this is a bill Congress needs to pass.

The culprit is the Prison Litigation Reform Act, (PLRA) passed under President Clinton in 1996. It was aimed at reducing frivolous lawsuits by prisoners, but due to its requirement that the prisoner sustained a physical injury and exhausted all administrative avenues before filing suit, it became a vehicle through which prisons and courts denied claims by inmates who were sodomized (finding no physical injury) and the victims of other conduct, such as "strip-searching of female prisoners by male guards; revealing to other inmates that a prisoner was H.I.V.-positive; forcing an inmate to stand naked for 10 hours."

Juveniles, who are most at risk in prison, often have the hardest time following through with the administrative hurdles. [More...]

Rep. Scott's bill would reform the PLRA by removing the physical injury requirement and using the standard applicable in other civil rights litigation. It would also allow prisoners under 18 to file suit.

In 2007, we had a Republican dominated Congress and the bill failed. This year, there's no excuse. This is a bill that needs to pass both houses.

The ACLU has been fighting for this reform bill for a long time. The current version is not yet available from the GPO, but I'll update with the text when it becomes available.

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The Scene

post from Talking Points Memo on 21 December 2009 08:12:00 AM. © Talking Points Memo

Sometimes you need more than C-Span. Our Brian Beutler was at the Capitol for the early morning vote, and captured the scene as relieved Democrats stuck together to move health care forward. Vicki Kennedy was there to embrace her late husband's former[...]

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Mike's Blog Roundup

post from Crooks and Liars on 21 December 2009 08:00:00 AM. © Crooks and Liars

Opinions You Should Have: Democrats To Actually Vote For Own Bill

Bob Cesca's Awesome Blog!: Progressive Expectaions

The Bobblespeak Translations: Meet the Press - December 19, 2009

Sen. Fritz Hollings: They're all against jobs

Majikthise: COP15: Obama's high-handed pseudo-deal

OFF THE BEATEN PATH: Share The Damn Road, Ketchup Is A Vegetable, Santa Claus Blog

Read The Full Article:
http://crooksandliars.com/mike-finnigan/mikes-blog-roundup-375

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Early Morning Swim

post from Firedoglake on 21 December 2009 07:59:32 AM. © Firedoglake

Health insurance industry bailout passes. It's not true that everyone's unhappy. The Shrill One: kill the filibuster. OMG global warming is so fake. What's next for progressives.[...]

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http://firedoglake.com/2009/12/21/early-morning-swim-219/

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Barack Obama "gets it"; Howard Dean doesn't

post from BuzzFlash.org - Progressive News and Commentary with an Attitude | Fight Ignorance: Read BuzzFlash on 21 December 2009 07:47:40 AM. © BuzzFlash.org - Progressive News and Commentary with an Attitude | Fight Ignorance: Read BuzzFlash

Body

As the familiar story goes, after meeting in the White House with president-elect Dwight Eisenhower, sitting-president Harry Truman grimly quipped: "He'll sit right here and he'll say do this, do that. And nothing will happen. Poor Ike -- it won't be a bit like the Army."

Although Truman was being a trifle ungenerous -- Eisenhower, as the Allies' Supreme Commander ten years prior, was well aware of institutional inertia born of parochial interests -- he was also echoing, broadly and accurately, the long-enduring frustrations of his office: Congressional deadlock, bureaucratic lassitude, the political system's natural sluggishness, factional disputes, personal antagonisms, immovable ideological camps ... ad infinitum -- in short, every imaginable roadblock to progress.

Having been there, done that, Truman was, however, correct about most incoming president's expectations. No matter how well read they have been in the history of their peculiar institution, virtually every one of them has been shocked to learn just how powerless they can be, Gulliverlike, tied down and overwhelmed by swarms of competing Lilliputian objections.

While on the campaign trail, future presidents -- again, even the best read, best schooled, best informed among them -- start thinking their Big Mo will carry their Mojo into the White House. Their overflowing rallies and sense of inevitability confirm it; and that, in turn, creates a set of symbiotic expectations: Hey, the base believes, we really can do this, no exceptions.

Then the presidential hand goes on the Bible, Congress convenes, ballyhooed legislation is submitted, and somber meetings and committee negotiations commence. And generally it's at about this point in a new president's term that one starts reading passages such as this one, from the weekend NY Times: "Little this year has come as easily as Mr. Obama and his team once imagined."

It -- the immutable reality of Washington's ways -- nails them every time.

Also at this point, having recovered from the transcendent intoxication of campaign hopes, sober White Houses adjust their expectations. It's either this, or unmistakable -- worse, unforgettable -- failure. And then one reads passages like this, again from the Times: "After weeks of frustrating delays ... Mr. Obama decided to take what he could get [on health care], declare victory and claim momentum..., even if the details did not always match the lofty vision that underlined them."

Yet, there is always what we might call a realization gap -- a kind of electoral lag -- that forms among some of any president's base. They're still mired, if you will, in the unadulterated expectations of the campaign trail; they're still pumped to go fight, fight, fight -- always a vague exhortation -- not having themselves sat at numerous negotiating tables and discovered firsthand just how immovable some parochial interests and political factions can be, and not having accepted that progress often means quick study and sudden adjustments.

Case in point: Howard Dean's appearance on "Meet the Press" yesterday. It was astonishing. I sat watching, slack-jawed but in utter agreement with Dr. Dean about the evils of private health insurance and the coming legislative battles with this monstrous special interest, should the recently tailored Senate bill be signed into law. Yep, that's what will happen all right. No doubt about it. I couldn't have agreed more.

So how, you might ask, could I sit vigorously nodding my head up and down while my jaw slackened in disbelief -- even disgust?

Simply because Dean repeatedly ventured that the bill should be improved, it should be improved, it should be improved -- while not once taking the good time and trouble to inform us just how the bill realistically could be improved.

The Senate doesn't have the votes. Never did Dean acknowledge that simple, inescapable political reality. We already know the bill could be better; we know every bill could be better -- and all of those vastly improved bills dwell in the uncompromising fantasyland of progressive otherworldliness.

That world is precisely what Truman's predecessor sought to escape -- and his successful escape is what launched 20th-century liberalism's upward trajectory. Franklin Roosevelt didn't play around long with celestial visions and he absolutely rejected unrealistic stubbornness. He took what he could get, when he could get it, knowing that small successes -- however disagreeable -- ultimately accumulate larger than their sum.

Obama, as a student of history, has learned from the master. He has, as the Times further framed his approach, "put a high value on ... keeping things moving, recognizing that history generally does not remember the to and fro, only the big sweep of presidential accomplishments" -- which build on themselves.

And that was the profound summary offered by Paul Krugman last Friday in defense of the result of Obama's approach: "Bear in mind ... the lessons of history: social insurance programs tend to start out highly imperfect and incomplete, but get better and more comprehensive as the years go by."

One does what is doable; that is the key to triumphant progressivism. Some understand that. Some don't. Barack Obama does. Howard Dean -- the unheeding personification of Harry Truman's lament -- doesn't.

Read The Full Article:
http://blog.buzzflash.com/carpenter/567

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Docudharma Times Monday December 21

Monday's Headlines: Obama's Guantanamo policy rings a bell Spanish quest to identify black soldier who fought against fascism in civil war Labor Data Show Surge in Hiring of Temp WorkersFed's approach to regulation left banks exposed to crisis [...]

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