New York Times — Democrats Seem Set to Go It Alone on a Health Bill
They’ve been going it alone for a while, actually.
In what writers Carl Hulse and Jeff Zeleny cast as a failure of Republicans to stop “misinformation,” Democrats are again forced to admit that they have a supermajority in both the House and Senate as well as the presidency and therefore should be able to pass health legislation if they want to.
In a fervid spin job, source Rahm Emanuel suggests that misbehavior from rogue agents like Chuck Grassley leaves Democrats no choice but to go it alone on health care.
But even more than when the threat was originally made in April, Democrats don’t have the votes for any plan right now. Liberals are in a sulk and moderates are calling for a do over.
Granted, the president will likely be able to bring the Progressive Caucus and others back around – especially if his team continues to disrespect the Senate Finance Committee – but getting a plan through the Senate seems like a tall order.
Though Hulse and Zeleny don’t say it, the implicit threat is that Democrats will use a nuclear option — jam a health bill through the Senate on a 50-vote procedural measure instead of the 60 votes that would be needed to do it on the up and up.
But that’s a risky proposition – the whims of the Senate parliamentarian could break up the whole thing after Senators stick their necks out.
Emanuel, though, argues that with Republicans out of the picture, Democrats in the Senate will be able to find new common ground.
“The Democratic shift may not make producing a final bill much easier. The party must still reconcile the views of moderate and conservative Democrats worried about the cost and scope of the legislation with those of more liberal lawmakers determined to win a government-run insurance option to compete with private insurers.
On the other hand, such a change could alter the dynamic of talks surrounding health care legislation, and even change the substance of a final bill. With no need to negotiate with Republicans, Democrats might be better able to move more quickly, relying on their large majorities in both houses.
Democratic senators might feel more empowered, for example, to define the authority of the nonprofit insurance cooperatives that are emerging as an alternative to a public insurance plan.”
Washington Post — Debate’s Path Caught Obama by Surprise
A pretty peppery “I told you so” from writers Michael Shear and Ceci Connolly to the Obama administration for talking so much about a new national health insurance plan.
The argument put forward by Shear and Connolly is that Team Obama made the public option too big a deal early on. As a result, liberals are ready to make a stand to keep it in the plan and conservatives are using the idea as a cudgel to assault Democrats for trying to put Big Brother in a lab coat.
But what that forgets is that the question of a public option is somehow avoidable. What Shear and Connolly suggest is that somehow the administration should have been even more vague about the president’s health aims: People are upset about the one thing the president has talked about, therefore the president should have talked about nothing.
That thinking pretends that issues don’t matter.
Liberals want a government plan because they want a single-payer, European-style system. Recall that the issue helped Obama beat Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries. She pitched a mandate with insurance reforms. He pitched a public option.
Conservatives hate a government plan precisely because it will create a single-payer, European style system.
The White House seems to agree with Shear and Connolly, though, at least as far as trying to rewrite history to suggest that the president was never adamant about a public option.
Obama’s new suggestion that a government plan is “just a sliver” of overall health reform is facile. It’s the heart of the issue because what liberals want is healthcare as a human right. Unless the president is ready to accept something like an employer mandate with expanded Medicaid, which would kick up a whole new round of opposition, it’s all about the national plan.
But the process of un-spinning the public option just makes an already muddled effort seem more confusing and more dishonest. In a sign of how bad things have become, the president finds himself politicking his base yet again. Meanwhile, moderates are running for cover.
“In search of new momentum, Obama plans to discuss the matter Thursday with thousands of his most loyal supporters in a nationwide ‘strategy call’ hosted by Organizing for America, a grass-roots arm of the Democratic National Committee.
He is likely to repeat what he and his top surrogates have said for months: that he will not ‘draw a line in the sand’ about the inclusion of a public plan and that no one provision is a ‘deal breaker’ as long as the final legislation embraces his broad principles for reform.”
Wall Street Journal — White House Rethinks How It Sells Health Overhaul
Writer Jonathan Weisman was the only national reporter to get the latest Obama health reboot right.
After failing to sell America on the idea that spending $1.6 trillion on health care was an economic issue, the White House is going to tug at heart strings by going back to the liberal roots and talking about health care as a human right.
The cost argument was always a flawed one because it is so false on it’s face. Once the CBO started dropping bombs all over that notion in May, the administration might have reconsidered the “spend money to keep from going bankrupt” pitch. But they staggered on.
Then came the July press conference and the “what’s in it for me” line of argument. But again, the risks didn’t outweigh the potential rewards for voters. And without a plan to sell, the president was usually only obfuscating and playing for time.
All the while, support for the whole idea was falling and people came to believe that the best thing to do was stop and start again.
But instead, the White House is going to make it a moral issue – the approach that has killed the concept in the past.
“But polling indicates the current White House tack is in trouble. An NBC News poll released Tuesday continues to show 41% supporting the way Mr. Obama is handling health-care reform; 47% disapprove. In April, 33% wanted a complete overhaul of the U.S. health-care system. That is down to 21%. Now, 31% said they want only minor changes, up from 21% in April.
‘Everybody’s very nervous,’ a senior Democratic leadership aide in Congress said Tuesday. Members of Congress have been asking for the five words they need to explain the health-care imperative, the equivalent of ‘It’s the economy, stupid,’ the aide said.
White House officials concede that the anger that has surfaced in town-hall meetings and been broadcast on TV is shifting the debate. William McInturff, a pollster for The Wall Street Journal and NBC News, said most Americans in the political center aren’t following the details of the legislation. They hear people yelling and see the president stymied even with a strongly Democratic Congress. Many conclude, he said, that something is wrong with the Obama health-care effort.”
Wall Street Journal — Violence Surges Ahead of Afghan Election
Writing from Kabul, Anand Gopal looks at the escalating violence in advance of the Thursday elections. A bank siege and scattered violence are all part of a Taliban effort to disrupt the vote. The group claims to have 20 suicide bombers who will strike polling places Thursday.
While President Hamid Karzai is expected to remain in power, the growing number of civilian casualties – on the rise sharply since March – has raised doubts about his effectiveness and the value of the U.S. presence among Afghans.
“On election day, police plan to erect hundreds of checkpoints throughout the city, which may further restrict movement. In the event of an attack, authorities plan to close all roads in the area for the full day.
The Afghan government is also preparing for the violence by banning domestic and foreign media from reporting about attacks on election day. The Afghan National Security Council said in a statement that decision was made “to ensure the wide participation” in the vote and to “prevent any election-related terrorist violence.” Authorities are concerned that reports of violence will deter people from coming to the polling centers.”
New York Times — Democrats See Opportunity in the West
One of the disadvantages of holding your circus in a big tent is that it’s hard to keep everybody’s attention.
While the South has been inhospitable to Democrats, the party has made substantial gains in a changing American West.
Writer Adam Nagourney went to a Denver meeting of Western Democrats like Harry Reid to look at how the region went from solid red to a deep purple in 2006 and 2008 and how the big government agenda in Washington is putting those gains in jeopardy.
The bet among Democrats is that gains posted during the GOP slump after 2004 — especially among libertarian-minded Westerners — can be consolidated by the fast-growing population of Hispanic voters.
“[Deputy White House Chief of Staff Jim Messina] asserted that Mr. Obama would also have won Arizona had he not been running against Senator John McCain of Arizona, a claim many Republicans privately agree with. And Mr. McCain won Montana by just three percentage points. Mr. Messina argued that both Arizona and Montana would be in play if Mr. Obama ran for re-election in 2012.
‘We are on the move here,’ Mr. Messina said, ‘and we are making substantial gains in part because we learned how to talk the right politics — and in part because we showed up.’
Mr. Messina argued that while Democrats faced challenges here, they were in a position to consolidate and expand on the gains they had made. Beyond expressing confidence about their chances in Montana and Arizona in the 2012 presidential race, Democrats expect that Congressional redistricting after 2010 will add four House seats in the West.”
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