And, again, don’t say I didn’t tell you this was coming:
President Barack Obama this week has been laying the foundation for Senate Democrats to use a controversial budget maneuver to pass healthcare reform.
By offering Republicans olive branches during his address to Congress on Wednesday, Obama has set up a win-win situation. If GOP lawmakers embrace compromise, a healthcare bill would pass Congress easily. But the more likely scenario is that Republicans will continue to oppose Obama’s plan, and the president later this fall will be able to note he tried to strike a deal with the GOP but could not.
The Republican weakness? Their negotiating strategy sucks. Why let people know this in advance?
Most Republicans have been deeply unhappy with the Democratic health care proposals so far, and Republicans on the Finance Committee were said to be bracing for two possibilities: a partisan proposal that they were going to oppose, or a bipartisan proposal that they were going to oppose.
Because the Democratic strategy appears to rely on the Republicans being the Party of No, it makes little sense for the Republicans to go into the negotiations telegraphing that no matter what happens they will oppose the final product. That just makes it too easy for the Democrats to sell the American public on the necessity of using the reconciliation process. They’re doing our work for us.
a swelled head is quite unbecomming!!!
If you think Republican negotiating tactics suck you should see the Democrats . . . .
Nothing like negotiating against yourself. For Example if we put a public option in the health care bill not Republican will vote for the bill. If we leave the Public option out of the bill, no Republican will vote for it.
Reconciliation is fine, unless it results in something like the Baucus Bill, which I will fight tooth and nail.
Just read over at DKOS that Baucus actually rolls back Medicare and S-CHIP. It Republican crap all the way and I won’t go along just to give Obama a photo-op signing “historic legislation”.
First Do No Harm.
Baucus’s bill is DOA in its current form.
Watch for it. Then the question is whether Democrats try to amend it piecemeal or with a substitute.
Of course, the Republicans could vote for Baucuscare just to gum up the works. But that would be a dramatic change of strategy, and if it passed their fingerprints would be on it. Probability: less than your chance of getting hit by an asteroid in the next five minutes.
Surely there have to be some Republicans gaming out such strategies right now. A few of them can make a real difference.
And it’s not like Republicans are ideologically opposed to the policy (corporate giveaways disguised as reform)–I mean the main component of Obama’s plan seems to be based on Mitt Romney’s ideas! And the GOP supported George Bush’s version of health care reform cum giveaway just 5 years ago! No, it would be pretty easy for a few dozen Repubs to jump on board if necessary. I’m sure the GOP knows they have this card in their pocket and I wouldn’t be surprised if they are reassuring their corporate masters as they pull their stunts.
It’s just a win win for them now as is–the Dems do their corporate master’s bidding and the GOP get to rail against the Dems anyway.
Interesting times. Seems like there is a lot in flux and interested parties should take this game seriously–it will lay the groundwork for who wields future political power. The money doesn’t preordain a result.
And if progressives are smart, we’ll take the public pressure, research, and strategy infrastructure we’ve created through the blogs and apply it to climate change, financial regulation, and the biggie-the Employee Free Choice Act.
We are going up against the healthcare industry now. But the fossil fuel industry has lots of experience in beating back change. And the financial services industry is still gloating about TARP and will no doubt use whatever TARP funds they have left to lobby against reform. And the last one is the toughest because it goes up against a coalition of every business lobbyist in the land.
Get ready. If healthcare is not a bust, then we are going to be flying through a conservative shitstorm until December 2010 and possibly beyond.
With Rockefeller opposing the Baucus bill, it seems very possible that it won’t even get out of committee.
I’m with you, Booman. This was always going to play out more or less like this, and the decision to hold fire over the summer was, I think, integral to the strategy. Yeah, it pissed off progressives who instinctively blamed Obama for being weak and ineffectual, or worse, a traitor to the cause. Then, September rolls around, Obama speaks, Joe Wilson shouts, the lunatics march, and it’s off to the races.
I still vividly remember the Town Hall Obama did in Montana with Baucus behind him in which he repeatedly praised Baucus. Something was afoot, something about it said that Baucus was in on it or being used, or both. The other tip, for me, has been the behavior of Howard Dean. He has been saying for weeks and weeks that a plan with a solid public option would pass—not might pass, WOULD pass. Even Lawrence O’Donnell, who bought the whole Obama-is-a-wimp business, is beginning to wonder if things might end well.
This was never, ever, going to be easy. In my opinion, and in the opinion of the White House, I think, if Obama had done what Frank Rich recently suggested and tried to aggressively frame the debate from the get go, the Republicans would have been in a better position to attack. They are great in reactive and obstructionist mode. As it was, they had to play their hand first, in most respects, and are now left with nothing. Suckers.
(See August 19th KOS Diary<http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/8/19/769308/-Health-Care-Reform:-Mission-almost-accomplished/EMBED>).
Haven’t you noticed? Pissing off progressives is the only way to get them off their butts. Just as long as you don’t piss them off too long or look like you’re not going to walk the talk.
It remains to be seen whether the chaos during the summer was the rope-a-dope strategy or just the chaos from staff divisions in the White House and Congress.
What it did do is allow up to wake up the progressive caucus and find out who in Congress was getting healthcare industry money. And strip the Blue Dog mask off some of those who were in the tank for the industry.
Watch for Kos’s poll of Blue Dog districts this week.
Making them use up their reactive firepower before we’re even at the middle game. Interesting notion. I’m still not entirely convinced that we would have been worse off starting with single-payer or Medicare for all, but he certainly has a clearer sense of what he’s up against than I, or pretty much anybody else, does.
One interesting consequence, assuming this IS a strategy: far from Obama laying back as the conventional wisdom has it, it puts him firmly in charge of the debate in the end. He will take the credit or blame for whatever happens. I continue to believe he has the smarts and the political savvy to make sure it’s credit that he reaps. He knows that the rest of his presidency and his place in history depends on it.
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