Ropeadope: some wonder if Obama played the left
As the healthcare bill finally emerges as Democrats’ worst nightmare: a law forcing every American to purchase private health insurance whether they want to or not (wouldn’t it be great for Pizza Hut and Dominos if Congress would pass a law ordering every American household to eat a pepperoni pie once a week? Or maybe, Congress could pass a law ordering Americans to buy a new car every year — wouldn’t THAT help turn Detroit around…) some in the Obama base are starting to get mad, and some are wondering if they’ve been had.
Glenn Greenwald makes a lengthy, persuasive argument in Salon today that the bill emerging from the Senate isn’t the result of Obama’s impotence in the face of legislative bullying, or a system that’s simply broken, but rather, it’s the bill the president wanted all along:
As was painfully predictable all along, the final bill will not have any form of public option, nor will it include the wildly popular expansion of Medicare coverage. Obama supporters are eager to depict the White House as nothing more than a helpless victim in all of this — the President so deeply wanted a more progressive bill but was sadly thwarted in his noble efforts by those inhumane, corrupt Congressional “centrists.” Right. The evidence was overwhelming from the start that the White House was not only indifferent, but opposed, to the provisions most important to progressives. The administration is getting the bill which they, more or less, wanted from the start — the one that is a huge boon to the health insurance and pharmaceutical industry. And kudos to Russ Feingold for saying so:
Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.), among the most vocal supporters of the public option, said it would be unfair to blame Lieberman for its apparent demise. Feingold said that responsibility ultimately rests with President Barack Obama and he could have insisted on a higher standard for the legislation.
“This bill appears to be legislation that the president wanted in the first place, so I don’t think focusing it on Lieberman really hits the truth,” said Feingold. “I think they could have been higher. I certainly think a stronger bill would have been better in every respect.”
Let’s repeat that: ”This bill appears to be legislation that the president wanted in the first place.”
Greenwald cites the available evidence — the secret deal with Pharma to prevent drug re-importation, Obama’s sudden embrace of the individual mandate, the lackadaisical attitude toward the public option and the swift push by Rahm Emanuel to get Harry Reid to get into bed with Joe Lieberman — as proof that the administration always intended to shape a bill corporate America would like. And he offers his opinion as to why that might be:
The administration wants not only to prevent industry money from funding an anti-health-care-reform campaign, but also wants to ensure that the Democratic Party — rather than the GOP – will continue to be the prime recipient of industry largesse.
Besides:
If you’re interested in preserving and expanding political power, then, all other things being equal, it’s better to have the pharmaceutical and health insurance industry on your side than opposed to you.
Meanwhile, the civil war brewing inside the Democratic base got a little hotter today, as Jim Dean — Howard’s brother and president of Democracy for America(“OFA”) took aim at the Senate bill, and made some ominous predictions for the future:
Here’s the deal, Senate leaders are all over Washington claiming they finally have a healthcare reform bill they can pass, as long as they remove the public option. After all, they say, even without a public option, the bill still “covers 30 million more Americans.” The problem is that’s not really true.
What they are actually talking about is something called the “individual mandate.” That’s a section of the law that requires every single American buy health insurance or break the law and face penalties and fines. So, the bill doesn’t actually “cover” 30 million more Americans — instead it makes them criminals if they don’t buy insurance from the same companies that got us into this mess.
… Without the choice of a public option, forcing Americans to buy health insurance isn’t just bad policy, it’s political disaster for Democrats — a ticking time-bomb for years to come.
Does anyone think Republicans won’t use this against Democrats in 2010?
What about in 2014 after the mandate goes into effect and the press reports all the horror stories of Americans forced to choose between paying their monthly health insurance bill to Aetna or paying rent?
Meanwhile, on the other side of Obamaland, “OFA” (Organizing for America,) founded by former Obama campaign staff, is trying to launch a nationwide phone bank to urge Senators to vote for the bill. Here in Florida at least, they’re getting a fight. Some Florida progressives have taken to the Internets to urge fellow Dems to refuse to participate in the phone banks, and to stop giving money tot he DNC (which Obama took away from Howard Dean to give to his ally Tim Kaine … and by now you can probably see why …) the DCCC or the DSCC.
There are some, including Joshua Marshall and FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver and Florida Progressive Coalition chief/Kendrick Meek Internet guru Ken Quinnel, who are urging members of the base to support the legislation, which they insist does some very good things even if it’s not perfect, while the opposition of much of the base grows larger and louder. (A walk through Democratic Underground today would probably make a White House staffer cry.) And what’s happening is worse than just an internecine war between those who want to burn Joe Lieberman at the stake and those who don’t. The blame is beginning to shift from Lieberman (and Harry Reid) to the man at the top: President Obama himself. This DUer is not atypical:
I understand that there’s some truth in the concept of limited political capital, and so it must always be spent wisely. So begrudgingly I accepted that Obama might be willing to accept 2/3rds of a loaf on HCR for a somewhat modest expenditure of political capital rather than investing a lot more heavily to win 3/4ths of a loaf instead. I drew my own private marker in the sand; inclusion of a viable public option in whatever HCR ultimately emerges (and I had my own good reasons for choosing it that I won’t go into in this OP.) Then I watched and waited.
Now I’m ready to blame Obama for his role in bringing us to where we stand today. And no, I haven’t forgotten that Obama left his seat in the Senate when he was elected President, I am just not willing to buy into the fiction that the acknowledged popular leader of the Democratic Party has no important say in the strategy that the Democratic Party follows inside the Senate. When was the last time you heard anyone refer to the Reid stimulus program, that he got through the Senate with the help of three Republicans? Or Reid’s budget? Does anyone believe for an instant that the only reason why the White House has been seated at the table in every closed door Senate leadership meeting exploring Senate legislative strategy on HCR for the last couple of months was out of mere courtesy?
Back in Washington, the White House kicked into fightin’ mode, with Robert Gibbs going at HoDo:
“If this is an insurance company’s dream, I think the insurance companies have yet to get the memo,” he said. “They’ve spent hundreds of millions of dollars lobbying against this legislation … If this is such a good deal for them, I’m not entirely sure why they’re fighting.”
“I don’t know what piece of legislation he’s reading,” Gibbs continued. “I think if you talk to members of the Senate, they’d represent a similar viewpoint in the political spectrum that Howard Dean does. They seem to disagree as much with Howard Dean as I think we would.”
(That constitutes “slamming,” in Washington reporter speak, BTW…) However, Ben Smith concludes that in the end, the WH doesn’t much care what Dean has to say:
One of Obama’s political advantages is his total independence from much of the Democratic party. He ran won the nomination largely without the support of labor, and without institutional endorsements. He inherited parts of Dean’s movement without Dean’s personal support. He ran his primary campaign without the support of many of the progressive bloggers now attacking health care legislation. And now he’s demonstrating, among other things, that he feels he doesn’t owe them anything.
And perhaps, there’s the point. (The Congressional Black Caucus, most of whose members supported Hillary Clinton over Obama, should wake up to the same reality.)
BTW, the White House is very good at the game of political ropadope. They hang back, allowing the left, right and center to take serial whacks at each other, refuse to take a side, and then step in just at the end to encourage the combatants to do the right thing. No one really knows where the president stands, until we learn that he’s for whatever is about to work. Robert Gibbs demonstrated the president’s jujitsu style today, when he refused to say whether Obama would support re-inserting the public option in conference committee. At this stage, I’m going to take that as a “no.”
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