November 23, 2009

11/23: Weekend Hangover

Even though Senate Dems succeeded in beginning full debate on the health care reform bill, conservative bloggers are in a better mood today than their liberal counterparts. The rightroots think it's a telling sign that it proved so difficult for Senate Dems to merely begin debate on the bill. Philip Klein explains: "[I]f it was this difficult to keep their caucus together on a vote to bring the bill to the floor, it may not bode well for the much tougher votes ahead." Liberal bloggers agree, and they're troubled that Sens. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) appear to be irreconcilably opposed to any form of public option. In their view, health care reform without a public option doesn't deserve to be called "reform" at all. Joan McCarter summarizes the views of many in the netroots when she writes:

"We're veering ever closer to the point where this bill is not going to do a whole lot more than force people to buy crappy insurance. The public option, as limited as it is, is the foot in the door to providing more and better options to more people. Without it, even as constricted as it has become, this bill isn't reform."

What else is happening in the blogosphere?

• Liberal bloggers (Bowers, Yglesias, Benen, Klein) are mocking Lincoln for announcing that she'd filibuster any bill with a public option at the same time that her website said that she supports a public option. Meanwhile, one blogger is wondering whether AR LG Bill Halter (D) will challenge Lincoln in next year's Senate primary.
• Liberal bloggers (Lewison, Benen, Black) are blasting Lieberman for falsely suggesting that Pres. Obama never supported a public option during his WH campaign.
• Conservative bloggers (Malkin, Erickson, Hinderaker, Morrissey) are stepping up their criticism of AG Eric Holder's decision to prosecute five 9/11 suspects in a federal court after the suspects' defense lawyer announced that they "will plead not guilty so that they can air their criticisms of U.S. foreign policy."
• Liberal bloggers haven't been impressed with Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO), but they're praising him (Singer, Benen) for saying that it would be worth losing his seat to pass health care reform.

HEALTH CARE REFORM: At Some Point You Have To Stop Compromising

Although some liberals argue that a public option isn't as important as people are making it out to be, most believe that health care reform without a public option isn't "reform" at all:

• Daily Kos' mcjoan: "We're veering ever closer to the point where this bill is not going to do a whole lot more than force people to buy crappy insurance. The public option, as limited as it is, is the foot in the door to providing more and better options to more people. Without it, even as constricted as it has become, this bill isn't reform. It's telling the insurance companies they really shouldn't cherry-pick customers and leave people without care, and erecting a few more barriers for them to get around while they continue to do just that. Triggered co-ops, the [DE Sen. Tom] Carper plan that [NY Sen. Chuck] Schumer is apparently pushing, isn't a compromise. It's no kind of public option and should not be supported by anyone calling themselves a progressive. It's a capitulation. So Senators [Sherrod] Brown, et al., it's your call. You said no more compromise. It's time to prove that you mean it."
• TPMCafe's Robert Reich: "Our private, for-profit health insurance system, designed to fatten the profits of private health insurers and Big Pharma, is about to be turned over to ... our private, for-profit health care system. Except that now private health insurers and Big Pharma will be getting some 30 million additional customers, paid for by the rest of us. Upbeat policy wonks and political spinners who tend to see only portions of cups that are full will point out some good things: no pre-existing conditions, insurance exchanges, 30 million more Americans covered. But in reality, the cup is 90 percent empty. Most of us will remain stuck with little or no choice -- dependent on private insurers who care only about the bottom line, who deny our claims, who charge us more and more for co-payments and deductibles, who bury us in forms, who don't take our calls."
• TalkLeft's Big Tent Democrat: "The Village Wonks and their allies have never cared about the public option (a perfectly reasonable position) and are willing, no, eager, to jettison the public option. That is their right. But for Democrats who believe that the public option is the only worthwhile reform in the proposal, this is an unacceptable capitulation. It is time to consider forgetting the 'reform' part of this and just focus on passing the 'assistance' part of the proposal."
• Firedoglake's Jon Walker: "Remove the public option, and the exchange goes from a bad place to buy health insurance to an awful, even more expensive place to get health insurance."

Firedoglake's David Dayen doesn't understand why Senate Maj. Leader Harry Reid introduced a bill containing an opt-out public option in the first place: "The reason to add a state opt out to the public option, one would assume, would be to bring conservative Democrats on board with the bill. But it doesn't look like it's done that at all. Moreover, it doesn't give those conservatives much room to say that they extracted changes that would satisfy them. If Reid had just put in the HELP Committee's public option, he could have watered it down with an opt out, letting the Lincolns and Landrieus of the world say that they got something. Now, they'd have to essentially kill it, either with a trigger designed not to trigger, or the elimination of the measure altogether. This seems to be a persistent problem with the Democrats, trying to design the perfect solution, pre-compromised, and then being surprised when the conservative Dems demand more changes in their direction. The bill has of course been compromised eight ways to Sunday already, of course, and yet the axis of [NE Sen. Ben] Nelson and Lieberman and Lincoln and [LA Sen. Mary] Landrieu aren't satisfied. At this point, these conservaDems don't have the likely 60 votes to change the public option in the bill. So who knows what will happen in the future. But from a tactical standpoint, I have no idea why the opt out was introduced."

The Washington Monthly's Steve Benen is also at a loss: "If you go with a 'trigger,' you lose the center-left and health care reform dies. If you keep the existing compromise, you lose the center-right and health care reform dies. The debate, at that point, becomes a fight over who gets the blame. There seems to be an assumption that policymakers will 'figure something out.' We've come this far, and most seem to agree that there will be some kind of deal that helps drag the bill across the finish line. I'm just not sure what that deal would, or could, look like."

HEALTH CARE REFORM II: The Silver Lining

Although conservative bloggers were disappointed by the 11/21 vote, they weren't devastated. On the contrary, many righty bloggers were pleased that it proved so difficult for Senate Dems to simply begin debate on the health care bill:

• AmSpec Blog's Klein: "[O]n one hand, Democrats scored a big victory today, but on the other hand, if it was this difficult to keep their caucus together on a vote to bring the bill to the floor, it may not bode well for the much tougher votes ahead."
• The Washington Examiner's Byron York: "The extraordinary thing about the dramatic events surrounding the health care bill in the Senate is that there was any drama at all. Lawmakers were simply voting to begin debate on the Democratic version of health care reform. Just begin debate -- not end it, and not move on to a final vote. If Democrats, with a 60-vote majority in the Senate, had not been able to begin debate on the top Democratic policy priority in a generation -- well, that would have been a devastating turn of events, both for the party and for President Obama. And yet just starting debate proved difficult, and only on the last day did the 60th Democratic vote fall in place in favor of beginning the process."

Townhall's Carol Platt Lieba: "Make no mistake that last night's vote was a serious threat. [...] But when considering the fact that, as noted below, 'bills that get cloture votes are passed 98% of the time' -- keep in mind that this was simply a vote to begin debate, not to end it. [...] Tonight, some senators who presumably oppose the bill in its final form nonetheless voted to begin debate. But at the end, it will be very hard for any senator to try to have it both ways, i.e., voting for final cloture (to let the bill go to a final vote) and then voting against the bill."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Will Palin Campaign For McCain?

Daniel Larison disputes William Kristol's prediction that ex-AK Gov. Sarah Palin (R) "will come to Arizona next summer to campaign" for Sen. John McCain (R):

"Were [Palin] to side openly with McCain in a primary against [ex-AZ Rep. J. D.] Hayworth, whose views match up a lot more closely with her supporters' views, she would be seen as imitating McCain's worst habits. She would be considered a worse sell-out than McCain. She would be doing exactly the opposite of what she did in NY-23. Her intervention may have failed to elect [Doug] Hoffman, but rank-and-file conservatives generally loved her for it anyway. She would fritter all that away if she backed McCain. In exchange for the contempt and disaffection of the people who currently adore her, she would win the enduring affection of editors at The Weekly Standard. McCain seems to be satisfied with this, but I doubt it would be enough for Palin.

Perhaps Palin could come up with some tortured rationale that siding with the establishment-friendly incumbent would be the crazy 'maverick' thing to do, much as she claimed that staying in office would be the easy way out and quitting would be the courageous, bold move, but she would destroy the foundation of rank-and-file conservatives' love for her. Palin generated such excitement because she was perceived by conservatives to be very different from McCain. This was wrong in many ways, but this was the source of all those enthusiastic calls for Palin to head the ticket and it is the reason why most conservatives instinctively sided with her during the campaign and all the internal squabbles with McCain's staff. If she intervenes on McCain's behalf, especially if it seems likely that Hayworth would otherwise win the nomination, she will destroy the political persona she has been crafting for the last year and cut herself off from the base she has thus far managed to captivate."

LEST WE FORGET: Facing Criticism, Goldman Sachs Cancels Plan To Dance Around Bonfire Of Thousand Dollar Bills

The Huffington Post's Andy Borowitz:

"NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report) -- Facing mounting criticism from the public and the media, Goldman Sachs announced today that they would cancel plans to dance around a bonfire of thousand-dollar bills.

The company had planned to perform a pagan dance around the inferno of blazing thousands while roasting a suckling pig as part of their year-end bonus celebration, but howls of protest forced them to reconsider, said Goldman chief Lloyd Blankfein.

'There's a consensus out there that this dance -- a jig, really, to be precise -- was in poor taste,' said Mr. Blankfein, who said the company would instead pledge over $100 to help small businesses. The Goldman chief said that the company would now have a more modest holiday celebration, including such activities as doing a line of coke off a hooker's ass."

Posted by Ian Faerstein at November 23, 2009 12:23 PM