Yesterday I wrote that if in fact the tide has shifted, as I think it has, toward more robust healthcare reform being possible, then Blue Dogs will have an increasingly harder time defending their opposition to a good bill that serves the public interest. Blue Dogs are not moderates, if by moderate we mean having a flexible, reasonable approach to solving political conflicts to get something done in the public interest. They are corporatist careerists who care more about their special interest constituencies than they do about the real needs of the Dems in the districts and states they serve. They use bi-partisanship as a cover for serving corporate interests.
I just came across this post by Digby that expands on the point:
If these Democrats had a brain in their heads they'd realize that the best way to maintain their power (and keep getting those big bucks) is to pass a good bill. Successful reform will be their only defense because the true political downside to passing a bad bill now is being out there alone selling out the American people all by themselves.
It's quite clear these corporatists [Democrats] really don't want to pass a good bill — they are, after all, more loyal to big business than the Republicans at this point, who see that there is great political hay to be made in taking the populist side (at least until they get back into power.) But in the end the Republicans may just force them to pass something decent anyway by failing to give them the cover for capitulation they so desperately need. It's an interesting squeeze play that may backfire on the GOP in the long run if good health care reform is passed. (Let's hope so anyway.)
Bi-partisanship, in other words, is a requirement for getting a bad, i.e., a corporate giveaway, bill. If the Republicans would kowtow more to the interests of the insurance industry than to their irrational base and their DeMintist ambitions to destroy Obama's presidency, a corporatist bill would be much easier to pass. Blue Dogs who support a bad bill can be isolated now, because they can't use bi-partisan b.s. as a cover. They will be forced to move toward supporting, no matter how grudgingly, more progressive, robust reform.
This provides an important opportunity for the White House and Dem senate leaders to start twisting Blue Dog arms to make sure they understand what's at stake for them, that they are now an isolated minority abandoned by their over-reaching GOP corporatist allies, and despised by the base and anybody who has a clue about what they really stand for.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out, and to see whether the point that Tony C makes in my update yesterday becomes more a consensus understanding about what the Baucus Gang of Six goals were: First, to delay the bill to give the anti-reform forces the month of August to kill it. Second, to supply a bill that would give the insurance industry everything that it wanted and which would be positioned in the public imagination as a moderate compromise.
At first, it looked as though the anti-reform forces attained their first goal. The anti-reform onslaught during the August recess was as ferocious as it was baseless, but it had an impact in the polls by frightening the uninformed. But there are signs now that the pushback from the pro-reform forces is getting traction.
They also seemed successful in attaining their second goal. The conventional wisdom was that the Baucus Bill, despite its being out of tune with the other four bills, was the only serious bill because it was the only bipartisan bill. It was the only one that would get the votes. It was the bill that Obama seemed to favor because he had to win on this or his presidency would be destroyed, and he had to support the bill that had the best chance of passing.
But here's where it went wrong: The GOP wouldn't give the Republicans in the Gang of Six the cover they needed. The GOP over-reached in thinking they could kill any reform, and in doing so mortally wound the president. The Republicans on the Baucus committed were forced to back away from the bill and in doing so left Baucus standing alone, looking like an idiot, with a corporatist bill that everybody on the left and right hates. In other words, we probably owe a debt of gratitude to the Republicans for over-reaching in their hopes of killing all reform. It has prevented the bi-partisan cover excuse the insurance industry was counting on to insure the passage of the bill they covet.
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UPDATE: Ezra Klein asks Jay Rockefeller if he's optimistic that we'll get a bill passed:
Very. The meeting we had last night helps me say that. Max Baucus does need our votes to get the through the Senate Committee. And there was a coalescence of Democrats that hadn't been pre-plotted. Some of these members had been quiet, and suddenly they were speaking, and loudly, about what was wrong. And if those things weren't fixed, they implied they wouldn't vote for it.
Rockefeller's part of the non gang of six Finance Committee and he says he won't for the Baucus Bill. It's also interesting to note that Maria Cantwell, also on the Finance Committee, says she won't vote for it either. Cantwell is one of our senators here in Washington State, and she's hardly a screaming leftie. She leans more toward the DLC than to the Progressive Caucus.
The devil will be in the details, and it's all about the amendments that will be coming hot and heavy next week. As I said in August, the real fight for reform will come in September, and it looks like there is going to be vigorous pushback against Insurance and Republican over-reach.
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