The strategy had some logic to it: if all 40 Republicans voted no, then Democrats would need 60 votes to succeed, a monumentally difficult task.
And if they did succeed, the bill would be seen as partisan and therefore too liberal, too big government.
The spasm of anti-government activism over the summer helped lock the
GOP into this strategy -- no Republican could afford to risk the wrath of Tea Partiers convinced that any reform signed by Obama equaled socialism and death panels.
The role of Olympia Snowe is interesting here.
Snowe negotiated seriously for months, and Democrats met what seemed to be her substantive concerns, but, like the Russian army retreating before Napoleon, she insisted that the bill be drawn out indefinitely.
Snowe demanded that the process not be rushed, but she never defined what a reasonable time frame would be.
In the summer, "taking your time" and "doing it right"meant waiting until after the August recess.
In the fall, it meant until after Thanksgiving.
Now it means until after Christmas.
If it lasted until next year, eventually Republicans would demand that the process not be rushed before the midterm elections, and that the fair thing would be to let the people decide in the 2010 elections.
The GOP leadership has every incentive to stretch the process out as
long as possible.
It runs out the clock on the first two years of the Obama presidency, after which high unemployment and the natural effects of an off-year election would produce a Congress far less likely -- perhaps totally unwilling -- to cooperate with Obama.
Snowe might have diverged from the party line on substance, but she
seems to have agreed to hold the line on process.
At some point, process becomes substance.
Thus Snowe effectively removed herself from the negotiations.
And so Democrats found themselves all alone.
It seems to be around August when the party realized that bipartisan deal making was not at hand, and it had to pass a bill or face the same calamity as it did in 1994.
Politically speaking, there were no good options left, but passing a bill offered the least bad option.
The unified partisan front of the Republican Party forced the Democrats to adopt their own unified partisan front, something that appeared impossible as recently as this last summer.
This passage from the New York Times is telling:
Faced with Republican opposition that many Democrats saw as driven more by politics than policy disagreements, Senate Democrats in recent days gained new determination to bridge differences among themselves and prevail over the opposition.
Lawmakers who attended a private meeting between Mr. Obama and Senate
Democrats at the White House on Tuesday pointed to remarks there by Senator Evan Bayh, Democrat of Indiana, as providing some new inspiration.
Evan Bayh!
Mr. Bayh said that the health care measure was the kind of public policy he had come to Washington to work on, according to officials who attended the session, and that he did not want to see the satisfied looks on the faces of Republican leaders if they succeeded in blocking the measure.
When you've turned the somnolent, relentlessly centrist Indiana Senator into a raging partisan, you've really done something.
The Republicans eschewed a halfway compromise and put all their chips
on an all or nothing campaign to defeat health care and Obama's
presidency.
It was an audacious gamble. They lost.
In the end, they'll walk away with nothing. . . . the substantive policy defeat they've been dealt will last for decades.
source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/20/health/policy/20health.html?_r=1&pagewanted=1&hp
source: From: Harry Hope <rivrvu@ix.netcom.com> (Forte Inc. http://www.forteinc.com/apn/)
Date: Sunday 20 December 2009 11:45:50
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