Health Care Reform Passes Senate Finance

The Senate Finance Committee passed its version of health care reform today. Woo hoo! That's a big one, the last committee vote. One Republican voted for it: Olympia Snowe, of Maine. Personally, I'm glad I can finally rest easy and not worry about whether or not she is going to vote for this committee bill.

Except that, of course, I now have to worry about whether or not she is going to vote for the final bill, and whether or not that will include a public option. Brian Beutler at TPM provides a good analysis of Snowe's role in the end game. If she supports the final bill, does that give moderate Democrats political cover? The problem with this analysis is that ignores the fact that the Democrats have a 60-vote majority. At some point, Obama is going to start twisting arms, and make supporting this legislation a key test of party loyalty. "Supporting the President" has a lot of pull in DC. At the end of the day, they are Democrats.

There is no question that some bill will pass. The only question is what will be in it. Republicans want to water down the public option. Snowe will score points with Republicans if she can claim that she used her leverage to make it a better bill, as Republicans define it. Of course, there's also the issue that she will look the odd woman out if she is the only Republican to vote for it. Critics on the right will be able to make her a convenient target, and they can easily accuse her of selling out.

But there is one thing that has to be keeping Republican leaders up at night: it is entirely possible that the Democrats know what they are doing. What if this bill really does bring a lot of resolution to the health care crisis? What is a public option turns out to be a good thing?

What if Barack Obama is right?

That possibility has to have people like Mitch McConnell just terrified. That is one of the basic rules of politics: you have to keep in mind that sometimes (hopefully rarely), your opponent will be right, and you will be wrong. The tricky part is knowing when to admit that. The trickier part is knowing when to recognize it.

The fact that one Republican might vote for this bill means that Republicans are hedging their bets. Democrats, to their great credit, have been very open to Republican suggestions during this debate. It was extremely frustrating for the Kossacks to watch Max Baucus negotiating with the Republicans on his committee for what seemed like forever, but there is no way that Republicans can say that Democrats rammed this down their throats.

So Republicans have to keep in mind that the Democrats might be right. If they are right, the fact that one Republican voted for it, and several Republicans on this committee negotiated with Baucus in good faith, would mean that the Republicans could claim that they had some influence on the bill, and it was their contributions that made it a better bill. Of course, the fact that almost all of them voted against it would be a rather effective counter argument.

The Republicans beat Clinton on health care. Newt Gingrich took that victory and ran with it, winning the House in 1994, much to the Democrats' surprise. But Clinton won reelection in 1996, and Gingrich was eventually forced out of office.

Obama's bill will probably be much better than Clinton's would have been. So Republicans won the battle back in 1993, but with this bill, they will have lost the war.

Run, Newt, run!

Newt Gingrich is thinking of running for president in 2012. Oh, please, God, let it happen. The answer to every liberal's prayers. An incredibly obnoxious, fantastically egotistical, deeply polarizing old white guy from the South. Wow, he would be the perfect candidate for Obama to run against.

Just to prove that he is as deluded as ever about his abilities, this is how Newt describes himself:

“I think I’m closer to Benjamin Franklin than to George Washington.”

I normally try to respect my political opponents, and I have to admit that every now and then Gingrich says something interesting. As a political strategist, the man deserves a fair degree of respect: he accomplished what noone else thot was possible when the Republicans took over the House in 1994.

But the best possible thing about Newt Gingrich running for president - apart from the sheer entertainment value of making the kind of bizarre pronouncements above - would be the opportunity to thoroughly humiliate him. There are many Republicans I respect and try to treat with decency.

Newt Gingrich is not one of them.

GOP having trouble attacking Obama

Pity the poor Republicans. Masters of the political attack, the negative ad, are now faced with a President who seems to be made of - what's that nonstick stuff again? - oh yeah, Teflon. Maybe sort of like Reagan, except that Obama is smarter and a better politician than Reagan. From the NY Times:

Two months after Barack Obama’s election, Republicans are struggling to figure out how — or even whether — to challenge or criticize him as he prepares to assume the presidency.

Hee hee hee hee.

The GOP tried to link Obama with Blagojevich, to very little effect. How badly did that backfire?

“I was saddened to learn that at a time of national trial, when a president-elect is preparing to take office in the midst of the worst financial crisis in over seventy years, that the Republican National Committee is engaged in the sort of negative, attack politics that the voters rejected in the 2006 and 2008 election cycles”

That's from Newt Gingrich. When Newt Gingrich criticizes you for being too negative, you are off the deep end and heading for the abyss.

The GOP will figure something out. There are some unresolved issues just waiting to be exploited, particularly around education. Democrats are big supporters of public education, and teachers' unions, but frustration with teachers' unions is mounting in the general public. Public employee pensions are a ticking time bomb. Unfortunately for the GOP, those are mostly local issues, and Obama won't have a great deal of influence over them.

But for now, the GOP can't even figure out how to criticize Obama. That's part of the price you pay when your ideology collapses in a sodden mess of greed, fear, incompetence and ignorance.

Dems feeling special about elections

Democrats have won three special elections in the last couple of months, in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Illinois. All three had been held by Republicans who left, for various reasons. So all three were open seats, but in strongly Republican districts. The GOP should have held on to all three, but instead lost all three. And one of those seats was the seat formerly held by Dennis Hastert, former Speaker of the House.

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo explains the impact of these three special elections:



One thing Josh doesn't mention (because it isn't his topic today) is that all these retirements and special elections have implications for the future. All of the retiring Republicans have at least some seniority. All of the new Democrats, both the three that won these elections, and however many win in the fall, will be brand new. That means that the Republicans lose a fair amount of expertise and power, while Democrats gain fresh blood. The Democrats, being in the majority, are also in a position to protect the new members. In midterm elections, the President's party generally loses seats, but this time around, in 2010, there's almost no chance that Democrats will lose the House, or the Senate, so expect more Republicans to resign. We're looking at a Democratic majority for a long time to come.

It's interesting to look back on 1994, when Republicans took back the House after 40 years of being in the majority. The reason they won can mostly be attributed to one man: Newt Gingrich. He plotted and schemed for years, and finally got enough people to believe in him that he accomplished a minor miracle, and the Republicans took back the House. One reason he was able to do it was that the Democrats never saw him as a serious threat. They had become complacent, since they had been in the majority for so long. But once they lost it, they started trying to get it back, and eventually did. It will be a long time before Democrats are complacent again.

Of course, Democrats also have to have their act together and get things done. I'm more confident about that now than I have been in a while. I think the Democratic party is attracting some very good people these days.