Maybe It Is 11-Dimensional Chess
There has certainly been a lot of garment-rending and gnashing of teeth lately about the health insurance reform bill and whether the public option will be included in the final bill. I think Obama is once again pursuing the long game – he’s allowing the Republicans to be seen as the ones who are standing in the way of bipartisanship and he is the one who is doing everything possible to get a deal.
We all know that bipartisanship is not all that important in the end. Medicare was only passed with 51 votes. No one is going to remember in the long run who was for it and who was against it. Another learning is that once it’s in place people will like it. So, Obama knows that this legislation is his legacy (his waterloo, as DeMint put it) and he wants to get the best bill that he can.
I hope Obama and Howard Dean are working together because Howard Dean lays out two different scenarios for getting a public option:
Scenario 1 – allow people to buy into Medicare. I personally think this one is brilliant because Republicans have been pushing the Medicare scare tactics.
Scenario 2 – House/Senate conference and reconciliation. In this scenario, the House would pass a bill with a strong public option and the Senate would pass a bill without a public option (to get 60 votes or more to overcome a filibuster). Then the public option is added back into the bill during the House/Senate reconciliation conference. Once this is done, only 50 votes are needed in the Senate (with Biden casting a tie-breaker vote). This would certainly allow some conservadems to vote against the bill, as long as they vote for cloture.
I think probably all of these options are on the table right now. Stop despairing and keep the pressure up. The media is starting to report on the pressure from the left, which is a good thing IMO.
Thank UI, I needed that. Hope you had a wonderful time at Netroots.
I’m feeling pretty good today. The pressure is working. The story today is the party’s liberal wing – not the townhall screamers or the Blue Dogs.
“..he’s allowing the Republicans to be seen as the ones who are standing in the way of bipartisanship and he is the one who is doing everything possible to get a deal.”
Except, as polls show, Americans don’t want the ‘deal’…or, Obama. This is why BO is now scrambling to present an image of conciliation; even he can recognize a dead mule when he sees one.
Welcome chess geeks!!
My husband runs a chess blog: http://grandpatzerchess.blogspot.com/
He doesn’t update it very often but he’s on Twitter, too @Grandpatzer
The public option is DOA. The reasons are obvious-costs, outcomes and votes.
There are much better ways to execute health care reform.
Howard Dean has sunk any subtrefuge by the Dems.
Mike Protack
Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) returned to the ObamaCare battle on MS-NBC’s Morning Joe today, preaching the public-plan gospel just as he did yesterday on CNBC.
However, this time, Joe Scarborough goaded Weiner into a little more honesty than he’s offered on the effort to “reform” health care.
Declaring that “health care is not a commodity,” Weiner says his aim is to eliminate all private insurance — which is why he will not yield on the public-plan option:
Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Monday reiterated her long-standing support for a public health care option in the face of signs the Obama administration may be wavering in its commitment to a health care plan run by the federal government.
(Excerpt) Read more at nasdaq.com …
Anthony Weiner is one Congressman. He still only gets one vote. He is a strong advocate for single payer.