Ezra Klein documents the fall of the public option and defends Sen. Reid's strategic logic. I think he's right, although I do believe that while Sen. Lieberman's vote may prove cheaper than Sen. Snowe's we need to be prepared for betrayal and be willing to take away his chairmanship if he supports the filibuster. This is a fight where winning the principle of a sustainable health entitlement is the most important thing. Thankfully liberal Senators seem to realize this and are willing to vote for a sub-optimal outcome.
That said, I'm not going to Sister Soulja those on the left who are not in Congress that are saying no bill is better than this. They're wrong in a very objective sense, there is no way we can hold out for more without upping the risk of loss (I saw a great post on this, but I'm posting this from my phone so I'll add it later Adam Green via Yglesias). That is a bad strategy, past experience has shown that each incarnation is weaker than the last one, wheras most European systems come about by building on partial successes.
However, being wrong doesn't mean that they aren't playing a constructive roll. That level of commitment was a good part of what got the public option this far. More over, as Ezra Klein noted, Sen. Lieberman's compromise is that the left has to lose. The left's acceptance of allowing people to buy into Medicare appears to have been a factor in losing that compromise. If Howard Dean was praising this final bill the Overton window may close again. We can all reconcile, hug, and sing Kumbaya when the bill is past. Until then, part of the left taking a dive means you need to fight until the end. This may mean some loss of enthusiasm in 2010 but even that is a small price to pay for victory.
Of course it's also critical to keep explaining the importance of this win, so I'm fine with the pragmatists fighting hard too.
In the future, in Congress, we will need to pick a fight, possibly a crazy fight so long as we've got popular support soon. The campaign against the filibuster should be part of that, and I think that a willingness to use primary challenges and cut off funds or else the culture of the Senate won't change. I don't think consistently getting 60 votes is an achievable strategy.
All and all we've almost got this, we can do this, and there's a lot of different roles to play. If we get it, it will be the most important liberal victory of my lifetime.
Comments