Matt Miller's column, "Take a Chill Pill," in The Daily Beast has it about right. The critics (and that includes yours truly, quite often) need to stop wringing their hands and start acknowledging that we will likely get a health care reform bill this year, probably later than we want but almost certainly this year. Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight also agrees and gives detailed reasons why.
As Miller, a senior fellow with the Center for American Progress points out, the critical move will come when the Senate finally reports a bill and then it goes to conference between the House and the Senate. That's when the White House and President Obama will step up with a full court press, marshaling supporters that have been at work for over a year, and hitting the hustings to galvanize public opinion.
Sarah Palin's "death panel" and Rush Limbaugh's, "Obama's a Nazi," and the hubbub at the town hall meetings are the rantings of a core within the Republican Party that's totally out of control and totally out of the picture, and they know it. And a lot of Democrats in Congress know they can't possibly let this group shout our futures down.
Even the Blue Dogs know that this is the moment where they have to stand up, because no matter how they vote, for or against reform, the Republicans will come after them next time with everything but the kitchen sink. So I'm betting that the Blue Dogs will nearly all gamble that sticking with the party in Congress that "brung them" is their best chance at re-election.
As usual, Nate Silver has a lot of specific reasons why the Blue Dog Democrats will come around, not the least of which are the huge losses to Congressional Democrats in 1994 after theClinton health care plan went down before it even got to Congress.
What will matter on election day is whether, finally, the Congress has done something really big for the middle class and indeed, for all Americans. And I think the Democrats will rise to the occasion even though the final legislation won't be pretty.
I have been really critical of Obama's strategy of letting Congress play a huge role in shaping reform legislation but I think I have been wrong. What may well turn out to be crucial to victory will have been Obams's not pushing a particular plan and insisting that Congress shape the final legislation according to some basic principles. He has insisted that this is the best way to assure that most Democrats in Congress, including most moderate Democrats, will vote yes when the final vote is taken.
And Obama's insistence on bi-partisanship, even though it has been repudiated by the GOP, seems calculated to persuade those Republican voters who voted for him and other Democrats in 2008 that they should do so again in 2010.
I am increasingly optimistic that this ambitious and patient strategy just might work.
What will come out will be a complex puzzle of legislation that will commit us to health insurance for nearly every American, will finally begin to define what we mean by health insurance so that people can be more secure when they get sick and will not lose their insurance if they leave or lose their job, and will create a down payment on serious cost control and a strategy for eliminating ineffective but costly medlical treatment.
A friend here is Bisbee on hearing me talk about what I think will happen said, "Oh you mean incremental rather than comprehensive reform."
Actually, I think it is more accurate to say that this legislation puts in place the essential elements that must be in place before we can think about the more far-reaching reforms that must come sooner or later, including payment reform. What we do this year may lay the groundwork for what must be done in future years.
Kudos to Miller, a Clinton Administration veteran, for sharing a large dose of political wisdom with us at this juncture. Miller, like others, compares Obama's situation to that of Lincoln who, caught in the furious uncertainty of the early days of the Civil War, refused to be pinned down to a definite policy, reserving that for the moments when his role became crucial and decisive.
For Obama that time will come when the conferees begin their work of reconciliation and the public begins to smell an actual result and also begins to see that today's civil war in politics must end. The most important task of health care reform is to help us come under a new horizon in our politics. Getting us there with what is possible amidst our present strife is precisely when presidential leadership is most needed.
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