How Many Votes Have Baker and Dole?
After reading Volsky and Cohn on the Bipartisan Policy Council health reform plan put together by former Majority Leaders Howard Baker (R-TN), Tom Daschle (D-SD), Bob Dole (R-KS) and George Mitchell (D-ME) I feel, well, kind of “eh” about it. This is not a great plan, but it would be better than the status quo. It’s about what you’d be looking for from a bipartisan compromise, in other words. Personally, I’d like to think that overwhelming progressive electoral victories would result in some juicier fruit than this, but the fact of the matter is that a lot of the Democrats in the Senate appear to not have particularly progressive convictions.
Which I think leads to the question, how bipartisan is this really? Howard Baker and Bob Dole are nice, but how about some Republicans currently serving in the United States Senate? Are Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe and Chuck Grassley and Judd Gregg and Richard Burr and Richard Lugar and George Voinovich interested in supporting something like this? If so, that could be a very positive development and I could see making the case for the idea that it would be smart for progressives to trim our hopes in pursuit of a strong bipartisan majority. But I have to say that I’m extremely wary of a “Lucy and the football” situation here. The political consensus seems to me to be that Dole and Newt Gingrich scored a huge political coup in 1994 by killing Bill Clinton’s health care initiative and, thus, that the most likely political road to recovery is to kill Obama’s hopes for health reform and thus deal a “major defeat” to the administration. If that’s what Republicans are thinking, then I’d hate to see progressive proposals just watered-down for new reason. Ever since the election, various Republicans have been holding out the prospect of bipartisanship as the reason to do this or that—to drop a public option, to eschew the reconciliation process, etc.—but you haven’t seen any Republicans actually commit themselves to voting for any of these more moderate alternatives.
28 Responses to “How Many Votes Have Baker and Dole?”
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June 18th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
Smartest thing I read all week.
June 18th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
“Are Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe and Chuck Grassley and Judd Gregg and Richard Burr and Richard Lugar and George Voinovich interested in supporting something like this? If so, that could be a very positive development and I could see making the case for the idea that it would be smart for progressives to trim our hopes in pursuit of a strong bipartisan majority.”
Good lord, why?
A bill that passes with 65 votes is going to be significantly worse than one that passes with 51 votes. It’s going to have incredibly serious negative implications both for individual citizens and well as for the treasury’s fiscal outlook.
And a good healthcare bill with a public option will be highly popular as it goes into effect. This is important in the calculus. Pass a good bill without Republicans, and reap the political benefits in ‘10 and ‘12.
—–
Assuming this is the endgame that will be pursued, I’ve got no problem with letting bipartisanship publicly fail early this summer. Bipartisanship should be publicly tried and showed wanting before the endgame moves are made. It produces the right optics.
Of course, this only holds true if you’re willing to play the endgame correctly, which will involve a nasty spat.
June 18th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
Aren’t these guys all lobbyists?
June 18th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
A bill that passes with 65 votes is going to be significantly worse than one that passes with 51 votes.
Yes, yes, yes, yes. The Democrats should seem far too timid to take the reins.
Could I also point out that Howard Baker could join Howard Jarvis in the Club for Men Whose First and Last Names are Both Also the Names of U.S. Minor Outlying Islands? Now all we need to find is somebody named “Johnston Palmyra Kingman.”
June 18th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
Sorry, pretend I just said “seem” rather than “should seem” up there.
June 18th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
“And a good healthcare bill with a public option will be highly popular as it goes into effect. This is important in the calculus. Pass a good bill without Republicans, and reap the political benefits in ‘10 and ‘12.”
Conversely, you want GOP votes on any kind of cap’n'trade scheme, because getting people to eat their vegetables doesn’t play well at the ballot box and you want some bipartisan cover.
But healthcare? Good lord. You don’t need bipartisan cover. You just need a well designed bill and 51 votes. The politics ends up taking care of itself.
June 18th, 2009 at 12:40 pm
Tweez, you must read some very, very stupid things. Are you primarily a joe Klein/ Kevin Drum kind of guy, because the only way this qualifies as ’smart’ is if you live in the beltway and make 100k a year.
Given how close Tom Daschle is to Barak Obama, a smarter take on this would be that obama is going to abandon the public option. Thats the reading that actually tracks with Obamas ‘governing style’ or lack thereof. He makes promises, pretends to fail at achieving them, and then takes the Clintonian middle-road.
It’s not like ‘bipartisanship’ wins you any votes. It’s a lot like being a good person. People claim they like that, but in reality, they always hang out with and date the total scumbags because people are weak and need to cling to someone more sure of themselves than those people could ever be.
June 18th, 2009 at 12:41 pm
Talking just about the politics, my read on the situation is that there are enough “progressives” in the Senate that have drawn the same basic conclusion as Petey, and they will be more than willing to kill a compromise plan if they find it to be too watered-down, with the expectation that they will then get something much better through the budget reconciliation process.
Now if the moderate Republicans (and those behind them) were smart, they would see this coming and try to actually get something done that the “progressive” Democrats could accept. But it appears that old habits die hard.
Or maybe it is all for show–for all I know the moderate Republicans (and marginal Democrats) are all secretly on the side of the “progressive” Democrats, and are more than willing to play their part in kicking this to budget reconciliation.
June 18th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
Wow, that was quick! Two months ago, Tom Daschle was the health-policy white knight unhorsed, putting the whole reform enterprise in jeopardy.
Today, he’s quoted in USA Today as saying we have to chuck out the public option before negotiations even get underway.
With saviors like this, who needs greedy-lobbyist enemies? Sheesh.
June 18th, 2009 at 12:47 pm
It’s not like ‘bipartisanship’ wins you any votes.
It does when your state or district doesn’t have enough members of your own party to get you elected, and you need both strong indepedent and some cross-party support to win.
Which, by the way, is why the best thing for the Democrats would be to finish wiping out the Republicans in states or districts without high numbers of Republicans, because the Democrats that took over in such cases would mostly add directly to their party line totals.
June 18th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
Personally, I’d like to think that overwhelming progressive electoral victories would result in some juicier fruit than this, but the fact of the matter is that a lot of the Democrats in the Senate appear to not have particularly progressive convictions.
Neither does the Democrat in the White House. I bet he’ll gladly accept this plan.
June 18th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
“Talking just about the politics, my read on the situation is that there are enough “progressives” in the Senate that have drawn the same basic conclusion as Petey, and they will be more than willing to kill a compromise plan if they find it to be too watered-down, with the expectation that they will then get something much better through the budget reconciliation process.”
The WH should be guiding them towards that same basic conclusion, if they’re planning this smartly.
I mean, seriously, if we shove a good bill through the conference committee and send it back to the Senate, we can lose 9 Democratic Senate votes and still pass the thing.
Ben Nelson, both of the Arkansans, Bayh, Landrieu, and Tim Johnson get to vote against if they prefer, and we still have 53 votes. We could lose Conrad and Lieberman too and still pass the thing.
We can get up to 50 on a good bill without the need for bipartisan cover. And as explained above, doing so will have positive political effects going forward for the Democratic Party.
June 18th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
You spelled “no” wrong.
June 18th, 2009 at 1:27 pm
They’re not. Obama is all about the appearance of “doing something” while not actually rocking too many boats.
June 18th, 2009 at 1:29 pm
I told you all a long time ago. someone who covers up for rapists and refuses to adhere to any semblance of their campaign promises (not trying and failing, but failing to even try) will not give you health care reform.
The only think Obama has shown any interest in fighting for is the suppression of evidence and trillions for bankers both foreign and domestic.
June 18th, 2009 at 1:32 pm
The WH should be guiding them towards that same basic conclusion, if they’re planning this smartly.
For all we know they did. In any event, however it happened, it appears to me the “progressives” have a firm grasp on the situation.
June 18th, 2009 at 1:44 pm
“They’re not. Obama is all about the appearance of “doing something” while not actually rocking too many boats.”
We’ll see. It’s in Obama’s political interests in manifold ways to get a good healthcare bill passed.
- It’ll immediately give him and his party something to run on.
- It’ll clear up the fiscal outlook for the rest of his administration.
- It’ll give him a legacy accomplishment that will rival First Non-White President.
It’s really a political no-brainer; passing a good bill brings political gain that far outweighs the political pain. I mean, there was a poll out today that showed “Public Plan” polling 76% for and 20% against. Think about what that means.
We’ll see over the next couple of months if they’re afraid of a fight even when everything is in their favor, or if they’re just saving their powder for when they can see the whites of the enemy’s eyes.
This is Obama’s first real test. I have no idea how the WH perform.
But unlike many of the other issues where Obama’s cautiousness can be plausibly understood as political wisdom, all the political wisdom on this issue pushes toward writing the correct bill, cramming it through, and owning it.
June 18th, 2009 at 1:52 pm
But that’s exactly what he hasn’t done, right from the starting gate. He’s been positively ostentatious about letting Congress write the bill. It seems to be a lesson he (wrongly) thinks he’s learned from the Clinton debacle.
June 18th, 2009 at 1:52 pm
What about a little bit of courage? Are you interested in fighting for the just cause or are you “pragmatic” to the point where you are no longer willing to stand up and fight for the right progressive cause (i.e. at the very minimum a FULL public plan) even at the price of losing???
June 18th, 2009 at 2:01 pm
[A]ll the political wisdom on this issue pushes toward writing the correct bill, cramming it through, and owning it.
That may be best for Obama personally, but it may not be best for the Democratic Party. I very much agree with your view that ultimately whoever owns the creation of a decent public option will benefit enormously politically, but spreading that ownership over as many Democrats as possible requires Obama to allow various members of Congress to take center stage for long periods of time.
Anyway, I think Obama will get plenty of credit for campaigning on a public option, consistently supporting a public option as President, and then signing a bill with a public option. The exact details of what happened in the legislative process that leads to that end are really below the radar of presidential politics.
June 18th, 2009 at 2:26 pm
Odds that public option survives and is in the final bill signed by Obama? Less than 50/50? I’m certainly not in a “glass is half full” mood given all the players trying to shoot it down.
How strongly does Obama really favor inclusion of a public option? Are some of his recent supportive statments intended mostly to quell progressive disquiet and rebellion?
June 18th, 2009 at 2:43 pm
Odds that public option survives and is in the final bill signed by Obama? Less than 50/50?
I don’t think a bill without a public option is likely to get through Congress. The “progressives” in both houses are adamantly against that happening, so such a bill would have to get the support of a bunch of Republicans, joining a bunch of Democrats willing to break openly with the “progressives”. And that is a highly unlikely scenario, to say the least.
So, I think the two leading possibilities are no bill at all, or a bill with a public option. I won’t try to quantify the ratio between those possibilities.
How strongly does Obama really favor inclusion of a public option?
I’m not a mind-reader, but he has consistently supported a public option throughout the process. Of course, I understand that some people believe he should be taking a more public and direct role in the legislative process. But I think that is more reasonably viewed as a difference over tactical issues, not on whether Obama secretly opposes a policy he has consistently supported.
June 18th, 2009 at 2:46 pm
I think someone should point out to Democratic Senators just how brave a stand they are taking by opposing the public option in health care reform.
That ought to shake them up.
Latest NBC/WSJ poll numbers
You don’t get to 76% approval from Democrats. You don’t get there with Democrats and Independents, either. Republicans are the ones who should be shaking in their boots on this issue. Republicans have to worry about people leaving the party because of the opposition to the public option.
Democrats seem to have this bizarre idea that they are taking the politically safe route by opposing this “radical” idea. Someone has to make it clear to them that this is an overwhelmingly popular idea which crosses state and party lines. Maybe, maybe, Blanche Lincoln would suffer politically. No other Democrat will. Bayh might lose some votes, but Bayh is an absolute lock to win his next election.
June 18th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
Not only that, but passing Baucuscare would blow up in their faces bigtime, because it would deliver a bucketfull of taxpayer dollars to the insurance companies upfront while doing less than nothing to keep costs under control.
Liberals really need to shout loudly and often that the Blue Dogs are being the very opposite of fiscally conservative- they’re against controlling costs but for handing out our money to the politically connected.
June 18th, 2009 at 4:51 pm
I hope petey’s right on this. public option or nothing.
And fuck BobDole, anything with him involved is just insurance companies trying to kill healthcare reform.
June 18th, 2009 at 7:00 pm
After reading Yglesias on the Bipartisan Policy Council health reform plan, I feel, well, kind of “eh” about him. His is not a great insight, but it might be better than reading Ezra Klein.
With allies like these….
June 18th, 2009 at 7:18 pm
Yglesias’ title alludes to L. C. Knights.
June 18th, 2009 at 9:09 pm
B:
Thought it was a paraphrasing of Stalin’s query, “So, how many divisions has the Pope?,” which was, basically, a challenge; that the Pope has moral authority, but no arms to back it up.
But Lionel Knights’ …Lady Macbeth also works…