One thing I don’t understand is why anyone would assume that President Obama would not want to enact most of the things he campaigned on in legislative language that closely adheres to his promises. There might be an exception here or there. I think Obama probably was pandering to anti-free trade sentiment during the Ohio primary, for example. So, he may have no intention of reopening the NAFTA agreement. But trade issues were not central to his campaign and they were not among the issues that motivated Obama to run for office. Health care was central. And he was careful to craft a plan that was pragmatic and had a chance of passing through the Senate and becoming law. It wasn’t a whole lot different from the plans that were advanced by John Edwards and Hillary Clinton. All three of them were relying on the same small universe of advisers and all three of them knew, as senators and former senators, what could and could not be reasonably expected to pass. They each were criticized for not advancing more ambitious plans. But it was clear that none of them were willing to pander for votes on health care by promising something that they knew there was no way they could possibly deliver on once elected into office. That type of grandstanding was reserved for Dennis Kucinich.
Unfortunately, once Obama became president, the Republicans adopted a no-holds-barred oppositional stance on every piece of Obama’s agenda. And, without 60 reliable votes in the Democratic Senate caucus, it quickly became obvious that his health care plan, as envisioned, was going to be extremely hard to pass. Even after Al Franken was seated in July and Paul Kirk was seated in September, due to the infirmities of Robert Byrd, there has never been a point where the administration could be confident that they would have 60 members of the Democratic caucus in the Senate to pass a health care bill. But that was only part of the problem. When it came to the public option, there were never more than about 55 reliable votes. At the committee level, the administration was able to pass their bill through four of the five committees with jurisdiction, but it was obvious back in January that the Senate Finance Committee didn’t have the votes.
So, the administration had to figure out how to keep the process moving. Bill Clinton’s health care bill had died in the Senate Finance Committee, and objective number one was to prevent a repeat of that catastrophe. Needing to win over at least one Republican and not being able to rely on at least five members of the Democratic caucus, there was not much choice but to entertain less ambitious plans for health care reform. But to suggest that it was the Obama administration, or Rahm Emanuel, who were responsible for these problems just never made any sense to me. The administration did nothing to discourage Nancy Pelosi from pursuing a robust public option, and even pressuring her most vulnerable members to get on board. Why would they do that if their goal was to water down their campaign promises?
But there is nothing that can be done if members like Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson refuse to give Harry Reid the procedural votes he needs to pass a public option. If no Republicans can be moved, then that aspect of Obama’s health care plan must be abandoned or weakened with a trigger.
There has always been the fall-back position of using the budget reconciliation process and, notably, Obama insisted that that backup be put in place in the Spring. It could still happen. But there are big downsides to doing health care reform that way, and it won’t be resorted to lightly.
In any case, I find it absurd that anyone would seriously believe (or ask others to believe) that Obama has wanted to weaken the public option all along. In fact, I think that is just stupid.
There’s a lot of estupidez out there. Indeed seems today more than usual, mas de locuras.
Follow up note: Thanks for this post and I so appreciate your analysis, Booman. Obama’s language is clearly the language of liberation theology (probably via the Black Church, James Cone, etc- just analyze his use of the concept of “hope” and compare w. Gutierrez). Why anyone would think he does not genuinely adhere to his beliefs, but is mouthing phrases for political gain, is completely beyond me.
How about “because he’s a politician and that’s what they do.”
That makes everything you have to say useless. Why do you bother hanging out at political sites when you know that All politicians are crooks and liars and will always behave as such? It’s kind of like spending time testing individual marbles and each time complaining bitterly that they roll. Very curious.
Thanks for your calming presence, Booman.
I was won over to Obama in the fall of 2007 because, when I began to listen to his answers in the debates, it became clear that he had a set of beliefs that he intended to marry to a clear-eyed pragmatism. In other words, should he win, he intended to be the adult in the room (like you in your own way, in the blogosphere). There is little or nothing he has done since then that has altered that judgement in any way.
Your previous post about Jane Hamsher is right to the point. I adore Jane for her passion and will never forget the thrill of propelling Ned Lamont to the brink of a principled rebuke of Joe Lieberman. But when politics met principle, when the rubber met the road, Lamont lost. There was a lesson to be learned there on the left that was not learned well enough.
Likewise, while Obama’s emergence may have been met by young, idealistic voters as a clarion call of hope (and the Obama campaign took full advantage of this), Obama himself never veered far from offering up a series of adult prescriptions that were reasoned, realistic, progressive at their core, and most importantly, adult. When he made the so-called race speech in Philadelphia, Beltway insiders were dumbfounded most of all that someone could walk up to a podium and discuss an incendiary topic in such a forthright, adult fashion.
I have been in almost total agreement with you since August about Obama and health care reform. Where we are today is more or less what a reasoned analysis in the winter and spring could have foreseen, and certainly what the team at the White House foresaw. When Obama hinted in August that the so-called Public Option was a relatively small part of reform, I think he knew then that there were other ways this could play out. In my opinion, if the result ends up with lowering the Medicare buy-in to 55, expanding Medicaid to 150% of poverty, and some of the other things rumored to be in the deal, then this is just the sort of thing Obama was hinting at. If the adult voices I’ve come to trust most on the issue–Howard Dean, Anthony Weiner, Sherrod Brown, Jay Rockefeller–end up on board with the wording and details of the bill, then I’d call it a win.
Obama walked into a situation as bad or worse than any President ever has. He was always going to approach this in a fully adult, pragmatic fashion. To turn this government around is like turning a monstrously large cargo freighter around. It takes time to slow down, room to slowly turn, and more time to set it on a new course. He will not have overthrown “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” in his first ten months in office, but I’m betting he’ll get it done in the next calendar year. He has not instantly made the government transparent, but before the end of his first term I’d be willing to bet that any objective analysis would be able to conclude that he has achieved that to a great degree. He has not magically stopped the two absurdly tangled, messy wars he inherited in his first ten months in office, but I’m betting that by the end of his first term it will be clear that he’s cleaned up most of the filthy mess he inherited and done, with diplomacy, what could never have been achieved on the battlefield.
The uncomfortable truth is that you have to have a certain amount of faith in Obama to believe he can and will succeed. I do. You make a brilliant point about his underlying links to liberation theology. Over time, I believe this will become more and more apparent. Unlike someone like Bill Clinton, who had liberal leanings and didn’t hesitate to triangulate to save his own ass, principles be damned, Obama strikes me as someone with unshakeable beliefs. I think he is truly willing to be a one-term president if that’s what it comes to, unlike Clinton. The misdirected noise from the left and the pseudo-left (Huffington)—so many of whom thought Iraq War supporting, Patriot Act enthusiast John Edwards was the answer!–is not going to shake Obama. He’s got core beliefs and he’s a clear-eyed political realist. He’s an adult.
Well-written and lays out so many of my same feelings. Fantastic post.
You say there is nothing that can be done about obstruction in the Senate. I disagree. It is entirely unacceptable to filibuster your own party’s legislative initiatives and suffer no consequences. Vote as you wish on the final bill, but if you vote against cloture, you need to be told by leadership that your chairmanships and other privileges are definitely forfeit at the next instance. Then it has to be enforced. Mommy and Daddy preemptively giving out candy to ill-behaved children in hopes of forestalling temper tantrums in the middle of Safeway is not working. You’re either a Democrat or you’re not, period. If you’re not, find some other family to feed you.
The chatter about having the votes suggests that tough love is indeed going on behind the curtain. But that doesn’t negate the obvious need for a thorough revamp of the way the Senate works. Either eliminate the filibuster entirely or attach much higher costs and obstacles to firing that weapon.
I’d like to think that Obama is playing hardball behind closed doors. But we just don’t know. I’d expect someone like TPM to pick this up if it was and I haven’t seen anything about Obama offering his donor network to Landreau’s primary challenger or of pork being cut from these senators states. At some point, these power plays should start to be apparent to people paying attention and they just haven’t been.
‘Stupid’ isn’t strong enough.
I’ve been told on the comments at Steve Benen’s Political Animal that Obama not only wants HCR to fail, he needs it to fail, because that will guarantee that he’s a one-term president.
Apparently if he gets his payoff after only four years, not only will he have it earlier, without having to wait for eight years, the sum the insurance companies have clubbed together to pay him will be greater.
This is a good post Booman.
Granted,there is a lot of stupidity out there but President Obama better realize that he is in an all out war with the bat shit crazy Republican party and if he can’t muster up some backbone, his legislative program will be smashed to smithereens. As mentioned upthread, privileges must be taken away from recalcitrant senators like Lieberman and generals who mouth criticism in public like McChrystal should be disciplined pronto.
I have two explanations.
First, Obama – like just about every president – managed to be different things, to different people, in spite of his express promises sometimes. Thus, some claim he has betrayed them by escalating in Afghanistan; they assumed he was just posturing during the election, because that’s probably what they wanted to believe. But the sense of betrayal is their own fault, for not being more clear-headed.
Second, I place a lot of blame on people like Sirota and Hamsher (and even sometimes Maddow and Olberman). For whatever reason, they encourage the view that Obama is omnipotent. They invariably think that what we see in public is the same as any negotiating in private. They assume that publicly flailing opponents is the best, if not only, way to succeed legislatively.
And as a result, they foster total cynicism about our elected officials, and Obama in particular.
In the context of health care, Obama’s public statements have been remarkably consistent the entire time. Anyone who blames him for the demise of the public option has no reading comprehension. Hamsher and Sirota should know better.
Yep, more or less in agreement about everything.
Oh, and also for the record, regarding NAFTA? I’m sick and tired of the left obsessing about that. Could it be tweaked and should it be tweaked? Absolutely. However, to say it’s bad legislation that should be repealed is preposterous. The left needs to drop their schtick about “American jobs” and this obsessive protectionist mentality. Yes we should support human rights in other countries, but to expect developing countries to use the same standards as the US for growth is pretty damned ridiculous. American workers who work less for more pay with lower efficiency and refuse to cater to market demands will still keep their jobs, while their Mexican counterparts still slide into further poverty.
One tweak to it could be to get rid of the subsidies for farmers/Big Agriculture in America, while simultaneously removing tariffs from Mexican goods.
It is funny how conservatives claim to love free trade, while simultaneously supporting protectionism for their cushy elite jobs (doctors and lawyers). So it’s not totally a left issue.
Sorry, tangent, but people at FDL have been pissing me off lately when it comes to economic issues; nothing but bridled populism not based in economics and fact, and hatred of the rich. It’s like a caricature of what the right paints us as.
if that’s true, and i have no doubt it is, then statements like “We will end the outrage of
unaffordable, unavailable health care” and “We believe that quality and affordable health care is a basic right” and “Democrats are united around a
commitment that every American man, woman, and child be guaranteed affordable, comprehensive healthcare” and “We believe that covering all is not just a moral imperative, but is necessary to making our health
system workable and affordable” simply shouldn’t be in the party platform. And that’s especially true if “When it came to the public option, there were never more than about 55 reliable votes”.
that, my friend, is false advertising. it’s making promises you know you can’t keep.
I agree with this, but only in the sense that i don’t think Obama cares one way or the other, since it’s clear that statements like “We believe that covering all is not just a moral imperative, but is necessary to making our health system workable and affordable” were nothing but slogans, evidenced by your statement that “there has never been a point where the administration could be confident that they would have 60 members of the Democratic caucus in the Senate to pass a health care bill.”
because if it was more than a slogan, we wouldn’t be looking at the turd we’re looking at now, would we?
To be fair, i’m putting much more of the blame on Congress for this than Obama.
brendan-
you’re talking about several different things, or you should be but aren’t.
The 60 reliable votes weren’t there for one of two reasons.
So, when I say they didn’t have reliable votes, I mean that they couldn’t count on all their members to be able to show up and cast a vote. That’s different from the situation with the public option.
With the public option, we have people like Ben Nelson and Kent Conrad and Joe Lieberman who are just ideologically against/purchased on the issue. Should we rewrite the Democratic Platform to reflect the fact that Ben Nelson doesn’t agree with us on many issues, including abortion? I don’t think so.
I think you are overly depressed about the health care bill. Notice that most progressives (Dean, Weiner, Rockefeller, Brown, Sanders) are happier now than they were prior to the negotiations.
“Should we rewrite the Democratic Platform to reflect the fact that Ben Nelson doesn’t agree with us on many issues, including abortion? I don’t think so.”
I don’t know, maybe we should, given the undemocratic nature of the senate.
I think a lot of my anger and disappointment is driven by the accomplishments (however bad they were) of the bush and the GOP versus what we’ve got with the Democrats.
it’s incredibly difficult for me to write about politics these days. It’s hateful.
It’s easy to exaggerate Bush’s ‘accomplishments.’
Remember the first thing he did was piss off Jim Jeffords and lose control of the Senate. Then he won it back and was able to do a number of things in the 2003-2007 period. But his biggest priority, social security privatization, failed miserably.
sure did, but he got his two tax cuts (which the base wanted); he got his wars (which the base wanted); he fucked with medicare (which the party wanted).
yeah, the big priority went down. that’s one out of many.
All the founding documents of the United States and most other democratically inclined organizations, including the UN, lay out beliefs about how things should be, what rights are inherent, the responsibility of societies for their members, the fundamental rights of all humans. None, including the US, have come within shouting distance of transferring any of these from rhetoric to reality.
By your logic, the Declaration and the Constitution, among others, has no business enumerating rights when they never had the means of enforcing them. Does that really make sense to you? If so, how do you propose getting closer to, or even conceiving of, those rights and social justice essentials without referring to the ideal state they are meant to approach? I don’t know — you sound kinda like my nephew who, even now sometimes imbibes enough to start bitching about how his parents lied to him about Santa.
But there is nothing that can be done if members like Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson refuse to give Harry Reid the procedural votes he needs to pass a public option. …
How about the possible loss of his chairmanship? Might that have movtivated old Joe? Yes, we don’t know what goes on behind the scenes but given the impunity with which Joe has spoken, it seems that such a threat was not forthcoming.
It just seems like Democrats could learn something from the hardball politics played by their worthy adversaries.
Lieberman is a special case because he isn’t technically a Democrat and he campaigned for McCain. His right to a chair is something that divides the caucus.
But it doesn’t accomplish anything to take away his chair if you still have Conrad chairing Budget, Lincoln chairing Agriculture, and Landrieu chairing Small Business. And there is no stomach for a wholesale purge of moderates from their chairmanships.
Also, as to Lieberman, if he can be coerced from time to time through a threat to his chair, it remains true that actually taking the chair away means you no longer have any leverage over him and his vote will be lost for many critical procedural votes beyond the one we’re worried about here. So, the real value of stripping Joe of his chair is deterrence to others who buck the party on procedural votes. But the less we can rely on Lieberman, the more we must rely on Snowe.
I think they ought to consider playing around with the senate rules because this problem isn’t going away.
“I think they ought to consider playing around with the senate rules because this problem isn’t going away. “
Agreed. it’s wholly dysfunctional and undemocratic to boot.
Of course, why would Lieberman or Lincoln go along with a change or rules? It is only through these rules that they get treated like royalty.
for that matter, why would ANY one them change the rules, booman? it’s a de-facto lifetime position, handsomely paid, wonderful perks, prestige.
as long as you do what the corporations say and throw a crumb to the people every now and again, while smiling and spewing bullshit, you’re pretty well set for life.
so there’s really no impetus to respond to what the people want except some promises every couple of years. and if your promises don’t work out, you can always blame a colleague.
i know how it works. save a job here, make the right noise there.
There “being no stomach” for it is no excuse for anything. They also have “no stomach” for dumping the dusty old-white-guy rules that have no business in a modern democracy.
And why do you insist on calling corrupt corporate toadies “moderates”? What is the evidence that what they do has some connection to moderation?
Hi Booman. I’ve been following your blog for a while and this is the first time I’ve posted. Thanks for the objective thinking.
The one thing that has caused me to chuckle/grumble/bang skull-on-desk exponentially during the many months of health care activism this year has been that many Progressives openly scoff at the “eleven-dimensional chess” meme when it favors Obama as a calculating politician working for the betterment of Americans. Yet, many of the same Progressives seem delighted to play thirty-dimensional chess in order to paint Obama and Rahm Emanuel as supervillains thwarting real HCR behind the scenes all year long and at every turn.
I swear that Rahm Emanuel has become the new Dick Cheney and I have read blog posts and comments about how out of control he is, how he’s leaking confidential shit all over the place, and how Obama bit off more than he could chew in choosing him, and how Rahm basically runs the place, while Obama is helpless to stop him. There’s no undisclosed location. Rahm is worse! He’s doing it in broad daylight!
Has anyone ever bothered to look at Rahm’s voting record? Much less factor it in somehow into the health care equation? Of course not. Why would that matter. He’s a single-minded political animal no with no concern for anyone but himself and nothing but a drawer full of long knives for Progressives.
There are plenty of justified harsh criticisms to be leveled at both Obama and Emanuel, but to not factor in their voting records on health care, accomplishments, life stories. It makes no sense! And to then send them on a kamikaze political suicide run into the 2010/2012 elections is just added ridiculousness.
Anyway, minor rant. š Just wanted to say Thx.
thank you. welcome to the Frog Pond.
The motivation comes from a desire to throw the Joo, down the well…
I would add Rahm wanted to stay in the House.
I’m glad Obama was able to brow beat him into taking the job. I mean… Mack McLarty anyone?!? How did Jimmy Carter’s “CoS not needed” work out? A noob or a non-entity would have already killed this bill dead.
I think one sad reality that the bloggist attacks on Obama reveal is the flaming lust for power among some lefty bloggers. Emmanuel dissed their importance and will never be forgiven. That said, I don’t like him much either and hope he departs when the administration is established. But painting him as some kind of evil svengali sinks almost to the lala-land delusion level of the teabaggers.
Thank you – thank you. Well said (and needed to be said).
I totally agree with your post, but the next question is, why didn’t Obama get tough on all the 5 dems that were bucking his agenda? The message should have been simple: give me a vote on cloture and you are in my good graces. A vote against cloture and you have my wrath. That was the message Obama should have been sending and the key is that he should have been pressing for procedural votes, and avoid the heavy hand with regards to actual votes.
Maybe that is what happens, I don’t know. After the devastating election in 2008, the GOP changed their game plan to require that everything the senate gets done would require a 60 vote majority for cloture. I believe Obama should have responded in kind to his caucus that because of this, his agenda and the promises that the dems made in 2008 were in danger. He should have told his caucus that they couldn’t be indulged the luxury of filibustering things anymore (of course anyone can still vote how then want). Obama has the bully pulpit and controls the democratic party machine- i believe he has the leverage to make tha threat work.
What am I missing here?
The Democratic party machine has far more leverage on Representatives than Senators, nearly all of of whom have a huge staff and an independent-of-the-party fund-raising apparatus. Many are sitting on war chests that they’ve raised and rolled over for election after election. And many have tactical reasons for wanting to be seen by their constituents to be bucking the president.
They are for the most part independent barons, and no less a pain in the ass to a modern president than to a medieval king.
But how about cutting them off from pork? Making them persona non grata with the DSCC? Or how about letting Plouffe and some of your top donors take meetings with a certain lt. gov who happens to be dipping his toe into the waters of a potential primary? This is about power and while these senators have some, Reid and Obama have more. All of these Seantors might have made the calculation that its best not to be best buddies with Obama and Reid, but can they afford to have them as enemies? Perhaps my cold calculations are naive for the current climate of DC, but it seems that’s precisely what needs to be done if Obama has any chance of getting his agenda passed. Having a disorganized, undisciplined caucus against the rigid parliamentary style modern GOP is the legislative equivalent of bringing a knife to a gunfight.
Why not strip Lieberman of his committee chair and give it to Snowe or Collins?
Obama and the senate leadership have had 8 months now to adapt to the shifting landscape. What’s their plan right now to adjust to it? I think that’s all the netroots (who are consumed with this inside baseball) wants to know.
“independent barons”. You nailed it, Davis. They fit the bill at every level, from their obsessive focus on keeping their privileges to their reliance on extracting “tribute” from those who want “favor”. Fact is, there’s not enough difference between the “modern” American body politic and Medieval power struggle to slip a page of the Constitution through.
How do you know that isn’t exactly what’s been going on? If we want to blame somebody, its the Senate Dems for not dumping the 40-vote veto when they had the chance. That’s what they should be held to account for. But that’s not up to Obama.
I imagine some of the more savvy insider types in the blogosphere like Mike Lux and Josh Marshall would be signaling to us if these 5 senators were being taken to the woodshed in private for threatening to not vote for cloture. I think we’ll see in the next few months whether anything bad happens to these senators. Do party institutions rally to save Landreau from a primary or do they sit on their hands and let Landreau fight against the progressives on her own?
For me, the outcome on healthcare was predetermined when the leadership were caught flat footed and unable to get control of their caucus necessary to make sure cloture votes were a given. The shifting landscape was apparent right about the time Judd Gregg turned down the job at commerce- that’s when the GOP showed its hands and Obama and his team needed to have a long hard discussion with the caucus about how things were different now and that he would need all their votes on cloture, no exceptions.
And yes, I agree that changing the senate rules is the answer and the dems blew it by not doign it when they had the chance.
Obama can’t afford to publicly take the corruptionists to the woodshed in public. If he did he’d lose his trump cards by forcing them to “stand up” for their “principles” in public. I think you give the bloggers too much credit for inside understanding.
You’re right, though: we will soon know. If any Dems end up nuking HCR by filibustering it, they need to pay with their political lives, period. Until then, I’m not assuming that Obama is not using every card he has to get this done.
I take no pleasure in pointing this out, but one of the greatest achievements of the Innertubes has been to demonstrate that the masses of people on the left, in general, are not hugely more intelligent than those on the right. And to the extent that they are more intelligent, it’s not that they are especially so, but only that so many on the right are spectactularly unintelligent.