12/17: A Healthy Relationship

It's becoming clear that until a health care bill passes (or doesn't), liberal bloggers will continue to disagree on what a bare bones bill must include, while conservative bloggers will continue the call to fight. After roiling the blogosphere with his opposition to the current bill, Markos Moulitsas says he can see how "reasonable people" could support the health care bill without a public option, and even concedes he could "rethink" his opposition, but only if the bill were changed to include some hefty restrictions on the insurance companies that the bill lacks. So can the liberal bloggers be harmonious by the new year? Well, that depends on what goes down on Capitol Hill before Christmas.

What else is going on in the blogosphere?

• Jim Geraghty questions why the DCCC would publicize a "I'm not retiring" list and points out some names conspicuously missing from it: Rep. Rick Boucher (D-VA), Rep. John Spratt (D-SC), Rep. Leonard Boswell (D-IA), Rep. Baron Hill (D-IN), Rep. Vic Snyder (D-AR), Rep. Allen Boyd (D-FL), Rep. Mike Ross (D-AR) and Rep. Nick Rahall (D-WV).
• After Hotline On Call wrote about the NRSC refusing to meet with Assemb. Chuck DeVore (R-CA), conservatives (Wolf, Hillyer) blasted the NRSC for "making poor and unwise choices" in SEN races. Hillyer, on the NRSC: "They always pick the wrong candidates, do the wrong things, promote the wrong strategies and tactics. They are a plague on Republicanism and on conservatism. They are a disaster. And they should cease and desist."
• Liberal bloggers (Yglesias, Klein) give Senate Maj. Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) props for his leadership, acknowledging how difficult it is to get 60 votes when you can't spare a single Dem vote, plus you have to "pick up one or two from the other side."
• Bloggers (desmoinesdem, Yglesias, Jessup) laugh off Time's pick of Fed Chair Ben Bernanke as "Person of the Year." Desmoinesdem: "He shouldn't even get another term at the Fed, let alone 'Person of the Year.'"

HEALTH CARE: All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth

Liberals continue the in-fight over whether it's time to stop supporting Dem efforts to get a bill passed soon:

• Moulitsas: "In short, there appears to be a divide between those who think the insurance industry will play nice, even with little incentive to do so, and people like me who don't. They believe that government will enforce the new regulations, people like me have seen entire industries employ armies of lawyers and lobbyists with the sole intent of undermining and avoiding such regulations."
• Ezra Klein"The bill is winding its way through Congress. The awful compromises have begun, the unconscionable omissions glare angrily, and some of the participants are both incoherent and disingenuous. ...I still believe health care will look more similar than different when the day is done. A good bill will pass, if not a sufficient one."
• Daily Kos' Jed Lewison: "Given the centrality of those subsidies to the expansion of coverage, one of the biggest questions about this reform effort is whether the subsidies are politically sustainable. Unfortunately, history suggests they may not be. ...Because the mechanism for making coverage affordable is subsidies for low-income Americans rather than systemic reform that would apply across the board, the subsidies will constantly be on the chopping block -- and the expanded coverage that is the goal of this bill will always be at risk."
• MyDD's Jerome Armstrong: "What I don't understand, is why the Senate Democrats would endure so much political damage as has been self-inflicted over the past 8 months, only to come up with so little reform. They could have passed those good things back in June easily; they could probably have co-signed McCain to introduce his bill and attach those things on it with a bipartisan stamp of approval. I'll betcha there will be no more partisan attempts at getting 60 next year. If McCain (or some other Republican like him) and Lieberman are not on board, anything in mind of passing is not going anywhere in the Senate."
• MyDD's Charles Lemos: "The best kept secret in the country is the healthcare provided by the Veterans Administration, a single payer system. So extending a successful program that saves lives and cuts costs is a naturally an object of GOP disdain simply because it is government-run. Their love of free markets will kill us all."
• Firedoglake's Jon Walker: "The greatest myth being told in Washington right now is that reconciliation could not produce a good health care bill. That is pure nonsense. ...Don’t buy Democrats’ lame excuses for not doing everything they can to get the best bill possible. Just because they don’t want to pass a good health care reform bill using reconciliation doesn’t mean they couldn’t."
• John Marshall, frustrated with a slew of e-mails from readers proclaiming they feel betrayed by Dems on health care and are done with "pragmatic political action": "I'm not sure where the idea got started that any of this stuff was easy."
• Open Left's David Sirota, praising Howard Dean's calls to kill the bill: "I want to take a moment just to recognize what has been recognized before, but needs to be recognized right here and now one more time: Howard Dean is a genuine hero. ...Here is a guy taking on the same obsequious Professional Democratic Elites in DC that are saying we must pass any bill, no matter how destructive, just to give Democrats a political win."

And conservatives weigh in:

• Geraghty, on what Dean's opposition means for the left: "Dean's style was never 'yeah, okay' - it was always more 'YEAAARRGH' - but the fact that he can't bring himself to call the bill an improvement over the status quo will trigger all of the anger points of the libral grassroots - cries of betrayal, paranoia about special interests, distrust of their leaders, attribution of sinister occult powers to Joe Lieberman, etc."


• Geraghty: "I could understand a senator voting for legislation that is unpopular, but that one thinks either is necessary (to make a bad situation better), or will become more popular over time. But this plan is likely to get much, much more unpopular over time."


• Power Line's Paul, suggesting that Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) is the one to watch on health care: "The best hope for derailing it now lies with center-left Senators from Red States because these members (a) may face electoral constraints and (b) may not be preoccupied with expanding government power."

HEALTH CARE II: You Went On A Man Date?

Without a public option or Medicare buy-in to make insurance affordable for the masses, some liberal bloggers wonder why the individual mandate is still part of the bill, while other liberal bloggers defend its inclusion:

• Daily Kos' David Waldman, on the "ridiculous" individual mandate: "What if we 'provided' millions of American families with homes of their own... provided they buy themselves one... or else face a penalty under federal law?"
• Moulisas: "The mandate puts the government in the untenable position of forcing everyone to buy a shitty product from private companies enjoying ant-monopoly protections. Funny how all the measures that helped people in this reform bill were stripped out, but the one that screws over many people and bails out a failed industry (that doesn't even need a bailout) somehow has no problem staying in."
• Matthew Yglesias: "But assuming you’re not going to have default enrollment, which has never been on the table throughout this process, you need an individual mandate to make the insurance function work."
• Klein: "Kill the individual mandate and you make it easy for Congress to let the country backslide to its current condition. In a world with an individual mandate, insurance has to be affordable. If it's not, there's a huge political backlash. ...The individual mandate controls average premium costs, but more than that, it is the political mechanism for cost control. Kill it, and you've killed our best hope of making the next reform better than this one."

HEALTH CARE III: Bernie, Bernie, He's Our Man!

While conservative bloggers thank Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) for being the GOPer to "finally" decide to fight by forcing a reading of Sen. Bernie Sanders' (D-VT) single-payer amendment, liberal bloggers are OK with Sanders saying he won't vote for the bill because they would rather give into his demands than Sen. Joe Lieberman's (I-CT).

• Erick Erickson, on Sanders pulling his amendment mid-reading: "In short, the Democrats have now crossed the rubicon. ...Hopefully the Senate Republicans now realize they are dealing with third world kleptocrats, not American legislators. Mitch McConnell’s 'messaging' strategy bought the Democrats time to cut a deal and now the Democrats are willing to throw away over 200 years of Senate tradition and order to confiscate 1/6th of the American economy from the private sector."
• Town Hall's Jillian Bandes, on Coburn's request for the clerk to read Sanders' amendment: "It could be a precursor to full-out war, where Republicans invoke every procedural hang-up in the books and invoke the wrath of the entire Democratic Party."
• MyDD's Charles Lemos, on Bernie Sanders: "Personally, I see this as a welcomed development. I'd rather have the leadership placate Bernie than appease Joe."
• Daily Kos' Lewison, on Sanders: "This is a big deal. Bernie Sanders has got to be facing incredible pressure, the likes of which Joe Lieberman or Ben Nelson have never seen. If he manages to hold firm to his position and improve this bill, he'll have shown that you can't always count on the left to cave to the right. That would be huge."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Deja Vu All Over Again

Daily Kos' Jake McIntyre:

"Has anyone else noticed that the split in the progressive blogosphere between those who are saying 'it's a good bill in spite of everything'...and those who just can't bring themselves to support Liebercare...is eerily similar to the split between those who grudgingly backed the invasion of Iraq and those who fought against the war seven years ago?

To a large degree, it's the same cast of characters, with the same tone to the arguments. It's the policy wonks versus the activists. On the wonky side, there is (and was, in 2003) a resigned sense that this isn't an ideal action, but that we don't live in an ideal world, and that consequently we should suck it up and support an imperfect initiative. On the other, there is (and was, in 2003) a resistance born of an awareness that Congressional Democrats will more often than not -- and often unintentionally -- screw themselves and the country, out of a misguided belief that powerful forces with agendas very different from that of the Democratic Party can be managed and trusted.

It's been long enough since the invasion of Iraq that the two camps - the credulous wonks and dirty fucking hippies - have reconciled (and even interbred), but the dynamic that separated us in 2003 is the same. The fundamental difference in approach is still there. When all is said and done, the wonks trust Democratic politicians to protect our interests. The activists don't. That doesn't mean that we don't like certain Democratic politicians, or that we don't cherish our wonky brethren. It just means that we're not willing to get fooled again."

LEST WE FORGET: And A Happy New Year!

From FMyLife.com, in the holiday spirit:

• Today, I felt like too much of a loser to go to a Christmas party, since I'd be the only one going without a date. I had to invent imaginary friends who were 'coming into town for the holidays' to feel like less of a loser. FML
• Today, my colleague rushed off to the hospital for the birth of his first son. Having met his wife at the Christmas party a couple of years ago, I called to congratulate her. Shame I didn't realize it was his mistress having the baby. Guess who broke the news to the wife? FML
• Today, we had our annual office Christmas party. The theme of the party was 'Ugliest Sweater'. The winner was a sweater that I have an exact replica of in my closet. It's my favorite 'special occasion', 'family portrait' and 'holiday' sweater. FML
• Today, I received an early Christmas gift from my boyfriend of ten months. It was soap. In a few days he will be receiving his very expensive specialized car horn he has wanted for years, while I will be enjoying my new bar of Walmart brand soap, which has already begun to give me a rash. FML