Health Care Reform: The Back-Up Plan

Apparently the Democrats do have a back-up plan if Coakley loses her race and nudie teabagger Scott Brown becomes the next Senator from Massachusetts:

As I noted last week, the House could simply pass the Senate bill unchanged, and Obama could sign reform into law. As recently as last week, a number of high-profile Democrats were saying that would never fly. But many are now suggesting that the House might still pull through, if House members are promised that the deal they agreed to last week will be passed separately–and quickly–through the filibuster-proof budget reconciliation process.

Jim Manley, spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, told the Boston Globe, the idea is “well within the scope of the rules of the Senate,” and, indeed, the deal with labor is largely a change to the tax structure of the bill, which is the sort of issue the reconciliation process is designed to address.

This could be done very fast, as soon as this Friday I’m reading.

Josh Marshall ponders the question, what will Democrats do if Coakley loses? Will they take the right lesson – that the Democratic base can’t be taken for granted and they want a better bill than the one proposed. Or will Democrats take the wrong lesson – that Americans hate health care reform. The media is already primed for the latter and not the former.

As a matter of politics, I have little doubt that even for Dems in marginal districts, it’s actually the safer call for them to vote for the bill a second time. Because the key is they already voted for it once. And from a strategic position in their districts, that is all that counts. Saying, ‘yes, I voted for it but, hey, when it came back from conference I refused to vote for it again and it never came to a vote and the legislation died!’ just ain’t a distinction anyone’s Republican opponents are going to allow.

I suspect it won’t even cut it for those who actually voted no the first time. But it definitely won’t work for those who already voted for it once. That’s the lesson of 1994, the conservative and moderate Democrats who killed health care reform derived not an ounce of benefit for having done so. Indeed, they were slaughtered en masse.

I have very little doubt that that analysis is correct. But that doesn’t mean the members in question will see it that way.