A few weeks back I did a diary called “Mis-directed Fury.” It focused on the reaction to the State opt-out idea on health care reform at FDL, and basically made the point that there are a lot more important things to get furious about than the State opt-out proposal. Today we have another explosion of angst and bile, this time at the report of Joe Lieberman’s intention to filibuster with the Republican opponents of health care reform legislation if the Senate bill contains Harry Reid’s highly constrained Public Option with a State opt-out. Meanwhile, everyone I’ve seen writing, or heard talking, about this ignores Reid’s continuing commitment to the 60-vote game, and his refusal, thus far, to start talking about using “reconciliation” or “the nuclear option” to get a really strong PO bill through the Senate with a majority vote.
Sure Joe Lieberman is a skunk, and should be thrown out of the democratic caucus. Tomorrow, if possible. However, spending our time ranting at Joe’s moral perfidy isn’t going to change the fact that Harry Reid can’t deliver 60 votes for a good health care reform. But, why, in the end, should we care about Joe, or Ben Nelson, or Mary Landrieu, or Blanche Lincoln, anyway. Harry Reid and the Democrats don’t need any of them to pass a health care reform bill with a much stronger PO than we have now. All the Democrats have to do is put aside “regular order,” and use existing Senate rules to pass the legislation they promised voters last fall with 51 votes. When are they going to get on with it and do that?
We ought to be spitting nails about their failure to make that happen. We ought be furious about that. We ought to be pressuring them to stop the ridiculous games of the Senate, and use reconciliation and/or the nuclear option to pass health care reform. We ought to be telling them that they have no right to prioritize their “regular order” over the 45,000 annual fatalities, and the one million annual bankruptcies that are occurring as a result of the present non-system, and the activities of the private insurers. And we ought to be telling them that the deaths and the bankruptcies are the Senate’s responsibility, because they refuse to pass a health care reform that will eliminate these outcomes. And finally, we ought to be telling them that we are so mad as hell at their failure to pass a good bill, that we will go out of our way to defeat Harry Reid and any “moderate” Democratic Senators who oppose a strong PO we can find in 2010.
As I write this, Rachel Maddow, who did a great job last night laying out the main alternatives on health care reform, including national health care, and national health insurance alternatives, while also distinguishing among different types of POs, and making the point that Harry Reid’s State opt-out plan is very weak, has jumped on the angst bandwagon. She makes the point that never in the history of the Senate has a member of the majority party caucus voted against his or her party on a procedural vote such as cloture, even when they have later voted against the bill being brought to the floor through the cloture vote. And then, Rachel, turns to FDL’s own Jane Hamsher for discussion of the situation.
Jane makes the point that Joe may not be the only one contemplating breaking with the caucus, but that Ben Nelson, and Blanche Lincoln may also be considering it, and then, bless her heart, she says “I dare Blanche Lincoln to join a filibuster,” making clear that if she does she will face primary opponents in Arkansas when she runs again. Jane also makes the point that Harry Reid bears the responsibility for letting Joe back into the caucus, letting him have his Chairperson positions, and vouching for his good behavior at the end of 2008, without exacting agreement from him that he would support the caucus on all procedural votes in the Senate. She also says that even though Joe may not pay the price in Connecticut for upholding cloture, if his actions turn out to be the death knell for health care reform in the Senate, it is Harry Reid who will pay the price in Nevada in 2010, for his error of judgment.
Those public fighting words from Jane were very welcome, as was the warning that Joe might not be alone in breaking with the caucus. I’m all for throwing not only Joe, but Blanche, Mary, Ben, and any other corporatist who wants to follow them on this vote out of the caucus. But I still think that all this is a diversion, because for some time now we should have been focusing on passing the best reform bill we could get with 51 votes, rather than the best one we could get with 60 votes. The 60 vote game, and also the 60 vote frame in the media, have both gravely injured the prospects for health care reform this year. Harry Reid should have signaled to every Democrat and Republican from the start, that health care reform was so important to the Party, and the country that he intended to pass the best bill he could with 51 votes if necessary, that he would not tolerate any filibuster games being played with the bill, and that at the first sign of such tactics, he would invoke the nuclear option and go down in history as the majority leader who ended the 60 vote shenanigans in the Senate forever.
We ought to start holding him responsible for not doing that. And also we should focus all our efforts and resources to demand that he shift gears right now, and start talking about the nuclear option and reconciliation right away. And we also should demand that while he’s doing that he ought to change the present version of his “merger” bill to remove the State op-out, to make everyone eligible for the PO, to tie the PO rates to Medicare, and to make the bill operational within 12 months from passage. In short, we need to quit raging at the second fiddles like Lieberman, Lincoln, Landrieu, and Nelson, and start playing hardball with Senator Harry Reid, who actually has the power to get reform through the Senate with 51 votes, and tell him we won’t tolerate the 60 vote game or frame anymore.
(Also posted at firedoglake.com where there may be more comments)