12:06 AM: Actually, per Chuck Todd, two Democrats -- Lynch and Lipinski -- voted for the reconciliation bill but against the Senate's package. But one Democrat -- Jim Cooper of Tennessee -- flipped the other way.
11:44 PM. Ken Bazinet says that it's Lynch who flipped -- one of my two guesses. Take that, Bowers!
11:41 PM. Chris Bowers thinks that Costello was the most likely person to vote yes on reconciliation but no on the Senate's bill. Could very well be. Either way, it's likely to be someone who doesn't face a tough re-election campaign.
11:35 PM. Reconciliation bill in fact gets one extra vote to bring it up to 220. I'd put my money on Berry first, then Lynch.
11:30 PM. The reconciliation bill has 217 votes and has passed, with 5 Democrats yet to vote.
11:29 PM. The reconciliation/fixes bill will be passed in a few moments here. This is the one the Senate needs to vote on too -- although the Senate's original bill still becomes law with the President's signature regardless of what happens there. Also quite likely that the reconciliation bill itself will be amended in the Senate (such as because of Byrd Rule problems), in which case the House will actually have to cast another vote to approve the changes.
11:24 PM. If anyone flips to vote yes on the reconciliation package after voting no on the Senate bill, I'd look first toward Lynch or one of the five Dems who voted yea on the rules package earlier (Altmire, Berry, Kissell, Peterson, Teague).
11:19 PM. Nice touch to have Dingell ask for a recorded vote on the reconciliation package.
11:18 PM. Motion to recommit fails 232-199.
11:14 PM. Another moderately specious argument that I'm hearing: that Pelosi had a few spares and therefore should have released some vulnerable members. The problem is that she needed commitments from some of those vulnerable members -- like Markey -- in order to persuade others to get on board. And once someone like Markey made a very public commitment to vote for the bill, it wasn't going to do her much good to walk it back. With that said, if there hadn't been this Stupak variable -- or people like Lynch being unhelpful -- she might not have had to ask for some of those commitments in the first place.
11:09 PM. The motion to recommit (a.k.a. kill the bill) unsurprisingly fails. Already 224 votes against (all Democrats). Next and last up is the vote on the reconciliation package. Wouldn't be totally shocking if the Democrats got 1-3 votes for the reconciliation package that they didn't have for the Senate bill.
11:06 PM. Essentially no surprises in the roll call. All 218 yesses from the New York Times whip count in fact voted yes, plus the undecided Jerry Costello.
11:00 PM. Stupak speaks out against the motion to recommit, which the GOP is trying to cast as a pro-life vote.
10:53 PM. As much as it's tempting to say: see, they really needed those Stupak votes and that's very probably true, it's not completely dispositive since (i) the votes aren't cast independently of one another -- some Democrats who voted no might not have if their votes were needed; (ii) some individual members of the Stupak coalition might have been picked off had a deal not been struck.
10:48 PM. All Republicans and 34 Democrats vote against. 219 Democrats vote for. Health care reform becomes law with the President's signature later this week.
10:47 PM. 219 Democratic yeas. Two Republicans yet to vote, although unless one of them is Cao, that won't change anything.
10:45 PM. Ballgame.
10:43 PM. Dems are at 210-31. Pelosi needs 6 of last 12 for passage.
10:42 PM. Why are there still more than a dozen Republicans who haven't voted yet? Now 209 for passage, still just 27 nays.
10:41 PM. Up to 203 for passage -- 27 Democratic nays.
10:38 PM. There doesn't seem to be that much motion/activity on the floor, another sign Democrats feel pretty comfortable about their total.
10:34 PM. The key thing to watch, of course, is the number of Democrats nays. They have 22 so far -- in the neighborhood of 35 are expected.
10:33 PM. Record ratings for C-SPAN tonight?
10:33 PM. Votes coming in surprisingly fast. About half of the Congress voted in the first 45 seconds.
10:32 PM. They're voting now. This first vote is the most important -- the Senate's bill.
10:22 PM. One lucky (?) break for the Democrats: since tonight's House vote has been so close and become the vote to watch on health care reform, and since Obama will have to sign a bill if/when the House approves the Senate bill, that's going make the Senate vote on the fixes -- where the optics are much worse because of the use of the reconciliation procedure -- feel like an anticlimax.
10:19 PM. Democrats did not use the entrepreneurship/self-employment argument enough during the course of the health care debate. Of course, I'm a little self-interested in that regard.
10:17 PM. Pelosi should probably be Time's Person of the Year for getting this done. Recall that Person of the Year by no means always go to someone who is universally liked. But, she's very, very good at her job.
10:16 PM. Didn't Boehner also imply that the cap-and-trade vote the most important vote the House had cast? Too tough to search through Congressional Record.
10:14 PM. Relatively tame for Boehner after a very confrontational start. Sustained GOP applause. He's not bad as a speaker in this relatively narrow context.
10:10 PM. Boehner wants a roll call vote -- which would be fine by me. One of the frustrating things about watching the House vote is that there's almost no way to know the yeas and nays until it's over.
10:04 PM. We're nearing the finish line here. I'm not sure if I'll have all that much to say, but you're welcome to continue yelling at one another in the comments section.
3.21.2010
Rules Vote Points Toward ~220 Yeas On Final Passage
@ 7:58 PM
The House has already cast one important vote on health care reform today, agreeing by a 224-206 margin on a vote establishing the rules for floor debate as they proceed to the two key votes on final passage later tonight.
All whip counts show between 216 and 218 yesses on the votes for final passage, although most account for a few undecideds which could push the total higher. Comparing against the New York Times's whip count -- we find that among those Democrats projected to vote NO on final passage, five voted YES on the procedural vote: Jason Altmire, Marion Berry, Larry Kissell, Collin Peterson, and Harry Teague.
Among the four Democrats that the Times listed as undecided, Jerry Costello voted YES, but Rick Boucher, Dan Lipinski and Lincoln Davis (whom other sources regard as a solid no) voted NO. Bobby Rush, who was technically undecided as of this morning but was not listed by the Times that way, voted YES.
Harry Mitchell, projected to vote yes on final package, voted NO on the rules bill.
Otherwise, all the votes were consistent with those projected on final passage, including NOs from Stephen Lynch, Mike Arcuri, Joseph Cao, and YES votes from Loretta Sanzhez, Paul Kanjorski, Pete DeFazio, Mike Michaud, and Jim Cooper, who made their decisions somewhat late in the process.
My guess is that in addition to the 218 YES votes that the Times lists, Costello will also vote YES, as will one of the five "surprise" yesses on the procedural vote -- although bear in mind that it's not uncommon for Congressmen (particularly those in party leadership positions) to vote yes on process votes and no on final passage. That would bring the Democrats' total to 220. But Mitchell, in a tough race in AZ-5, should also be watched for a potential defection.
It's also important to remember that there are two important votes on substance that the House will cast tonight: one on the Senate's bill and the other on the package of reconciliation fixes. The reconciliation bill -- relatively more popular with the rank-and-file -- could conceivably pick up a couple of yes votes that the Senate bill does not.
All whip counts show between 216 and 218 yesses on the votes for final passage, although most account for a few undecideds which could push the total higher. Comparing against the New York Times's whip count -- we find that among those Democrats projected to vote NO on final passage, five voted YES on the procedural vote: Jason Altmire, Marion Berry, Larry Kissell, Collin Peterson, and Harry Teague.
Among the four Democrats that the Times listed as undecided, Jerry Costello voted YES, but Rick Boucher, Dan Lipinski and Lincoln Davis (whom other sources regard as a solid no) voted NO. Bobby Rush, who was technically undecided as of this morning but was not listed by the Times that way, voted YES.
Harry Mitchell, projected to vote yes on final package, voted NO on the rules bill.
Otherwise, all the votes were consistent with those projected on final passage, including NOs from Stephen Lynch, Mike Arcuri, Joseph Cao, and YES votes from Loretta Sanzhez, Paul Kanjorski, Pete DeFazio, Mike Michaud, and Jim Cooper, who made their decisions somewhat late in the process.
My guess is that in addition to the 218 YES votes that the Times lists, Costello will also vote YES, as will one of the five "surprise" yesses on the procedural vote -- although bear in mind that it's not uncommon for Congressmen (particularly those in party leadership positions) to vote yes on process votes and no on final passage. That would bring the Democrats' total to 220. But Mitchell, in a tough race in AZ-5, should also be watched for a potential defection.
It's also important to remember that there are two important votes on substance that the House will cast tonight: one on the Senate's bill and the other on the package of reconciliation fixes. The reconciliation bill -- relatively more popular with the rank-and-file -- could conceivably pick up a couple of yes votes that the Senate bill does not.
UPDATED: Whip Counts Now Show Democrats With 216+ Solid Yes Votes
@ 6:22 PM
Lots of action in the last 20 minutes or so, so let's go ahead and start a fresh thread.
David Dayen: listed 215 yes votes earlier, but did not account for Paul Kanjorski or Joe Donnelly, who have announced their intentions to vote for the bill in the last half-hour or so. That would bring his count to 217. Dayen's total does include Bobby Rush, who still insisted on calling himself undecided as of this morning and to my knowledge has yet to revise that position. So call it 216 if you want to be conservative.
New York Times: This appears to be the most up-to-date count. They list 218 yes votes, counting Rush, or 217 without him.
CBS News: They also list 216 yes votes, not counting Rush -- but also not counting Kanjorski. So this should be read as 217.
The Hill: lists 214 yes votes -- but three of their four undecideds -- Kanjorski, Cooper, Sanchez -- have since come out in favor of the bill, which would bring their total to 217 as well.
[UPDATED] Washington Post: 216, not counting Rush, but they've also not yet counted Sanchez -- so this is also 217.
Lastly, the White House has said it expects to get about 220 yes votes. That's my best guess too, although there will be two different dynamics pulling on legislators once the roll call is taken. On the one hand, if passage looks assured, anybody who had an objection to the bill will have the opportunity to vote against it without seeming to kill it; on the other hand, some other legislators might want to be on the "right side of history", yadda yadda, and will get caught up in the momentum. It still wouldn't completely surprise me if representatives who would suffer little electoral consequence from voting no -- such as John Tanner, who is retiring, Mike Arcuri, who is highly vulnerable to a primary challenge, or Stephen Lynch, who comes from a quite liberal district, wind up voting yes on the bill after all. The vote of the lone Republican to support the bill in November, Joseph Cao, could also come back into play now that a compromise on abortion language has been reached. But there could also be one or two surprise nos.
David Dayen: listed 215 yes votes earlier, but did not account for Paul Kanjorski or Joe Donnelly, who have announced their intentions to vote for the bill in the last half-hour or so. That would bring his count to 217. Dayen's total does include Bobby Rush, who still insisted on calling himself undecided as of this morning and to my knowledge has yet to revise that position. So call it 216 if you want to be conservative.
New York Times: This appears to be the most up-to-date count. They list 218 yes votes, counting Rush, or 217 without him.
CBS News: They also list 216 yes votes, not counting Rush -- but also not counting Kanjorski. So this should be read as 217.
The Hill: lists 214 yes votes -- but three of their four undecideds -- Kanjorski, Cooper, Sanchez -- have since come out in favor of the bill, which would bring their total to 217 as well.
[UPDATED] Washington Post: 216, not counting Rush, but they've also not yet counted Sanchez -- so this is also 217.
Lastly, the White House has said it expects to get about 220 yes votes. That's my best guess too, although there will be two different dynamics pulling on legislators once the roll call is taken. On the one hand, if passage looks assured, anybody who had an objection to the bill will have the opportunity to vote against it without seeming to kill it; on the other hand, some other legislators might want to be on the "right side of history", yadda yadda, and will get caught up in the momentum. It still wouldn't completely surprise me if representatives who would suffer little electoral consequence from voting no -- such as John Tanner, who is retiring, Mike Arcuri, who is highly vulnerable to a primary challenge, or Stephen Lynch, who comes from a quite liberal district, wind up voting yes on the bill after all. The vote of the lone Republican to support the bill in November, Joseph Cao, could also come back into play now that a compromise on abortion language has been reached. But there could also be one or two surprise nos.
Passage Almost Certain, But Number of Votes Unclear
@ 6:00 PM
UPDATE: Sorry -- this information is already out-of-date and comments have been shut off. Please see the new thread.
The New York Times currently lists217 218 votes for passage of health care reform, with 6 4 legislators undecided. Of the 217 218 yes votes that they count, one is at least a little tenuous: Loretta Sanchez, who has been flaky, and Bobby Rush, who still insisted on calling himself undecided as of this morning. They also list Tennessee's Lincoln Davis as undecided, who said earlier he'd vote no. On the other hand, they list Republican Joseph Cao as a no, but he could be brought back into the fold after the compromise on abortion language.
David Dayen, meanwhile, had 213 yes votes, although that total did not account for Indiana's Joe Donnelly or Pennsylvania's Paul Kanjorski, who has since been revealed to be on board with the bill. Technically, then, passage is not assured by Dayen's count, although he believes that several of the 7 undecideds that he list are likely to come on board.
CBS News splits the difference by listing 215 confirmed yes votes and 8 undecideds; like the New York Times, they count Lincoln Davis as undecided, Joseph Cao as a no, and Sanchez as a yes, although they do keep Rush at undecided.
The Hill, whose whip count has been somewhat deceivingly pessimistic throughout the health care debate, lists 214 yes votes and 4 undecided; they classify several lawmakers as no or leaning no that most other sources regard as undecided.
Lastly, the White House has said it expects to get about 220 yes votes. That's my best guess too, although there will be two different dynamics pulling on legislators once the roll call is taken. On the one hand, if passage looks assured, anybody who had an objection to the bill will have the opportunity to vote against it without seeming to kill it; on the other hand, some other legislators might want to be on the "right side of history" and will get caught up in the momentum. It still wouldn't completely surprise me if representatives who would suffer little electoral consequence from voting no -- such as John Tanner, who is retiring, Mike Arcuri, who is highly vulnerable to a primary challenge, or Stephen Lynch, who comes from a quite liberal district, to wind up voting yes on the bill after all.
The New York Times currently lists
David Dayen, meanwhile, had 213 yes votes, although that total did not account for Indiana's Joe Donnelly or Pennsylvania's Paul Kanjorski, who has since been revealed to be on board with the bill. Technically, then, passage is not assured by Dayen's count, although he believes that several of the 7 undecideds that he list are likely to come on board.
CBS News splits the difference by listing 215 confirmed yes votes and 8 undecideds; like the New York Times, they count Lincoln Davis as undecided, Joseph Cao as a no, and Sanchez as a yes, although they do keep Rush at undecided.
The Hill, whose whip count has been somewhat deceivingly pessimistic throughout the health care debate, lists 214 yes votes and 4 undecided; they classify several lawmakers as no or leaning no that most other sources regard as undecided.
Lastly, the White House has said it expects to get about 220 yes votes. That's my best guess too, although there will be two different dynamics pulling on legislators once the roll call is taken. On the one hand, if passage looks assured, anybody who had an objection to the bill will have the opportunity to vote against it without seeming to kill it; on the other hand, some other legislators might want to be on the "right side of history" and will get caught up in the momentum. It still wouldn't completely surprise me if representatives who would suffer little electoral consequence from voting no -- such as John Tanner, who is retiring, Mike Arcuri, who is highly vulnerable to a primary challenge, or Stephen Lynch, who comes from a quite liberal district, to wind up voting yes on the bill after all.
What We Learned
@ 4:31 PM
Healthcare reform is expected to pass later today. After years—nay, decades—of failed attempts by various presidents to restructure our hodgepodge, post-war, employer-based insurance system, President Barack Obama and a Democratic Congress have finally broken through. The legislation is imperfect and will hardly solve all of America’s problems, but it’s a start.
Putting the policy and its implications aside, what political lessons can we takeaway from the past year? Plenty, some of them rather disconcerting.
1. Non-incremental policy change is never easy. Presidents since Harry Truman have been trying to solve our healthcare problems. Following Scott Brown's tectonic election in Massachusetts, President Barack Obama was correct when he reminded the nation how politically risky and damaging it was for him to tackle healthcare reform in the first place. But whatever credit he deserves for taking that risk must be leavened by the fact that the White House at times did not seem ready to prosecute a message and campaign commensurate with such a major policy reform--as both David Axelrod in a fantastic recent New Yorker piece by George Packer and the president himself conceded in his State of the Union speech this year. Non-incremental change, especially on this contentious and complex issue, required a full-on assault by the Administration using every weapon in its arsenal.
2. The presidential pulpit doesn't bully by itself. The Washington Post recently ran a Sunday "Outlook" cover piece about how Obama's cool, dispassionate, intellectual, bridge-building style would be more amenable to service on the Supreme Court than in the White House. I like to think Obama's style is suitably presidential too, but until recently it seemed like the president was unable to get tough--that his conciliatory tone was not helping him or his fellow Democrats that much. If you presume there are votes to be gained across the aisle (or even within your own party) but reaching out a hand, fine. But given that the GOP was clearly signaling its obstinance no matter what--see Senator Jim "Alamo" DeMint; see also #7, below--Obama may as well have thundered away from the start. Say what you want about George W. Bush, but he always "asked for your vote" in campaigns and managed to move the public and the Congress on far less popular and necessary agenda items via stubborn insistence on his position. Obama's belief that his election was somehow a tonic for the type of politics played in Washington was, in the end, a fantasy. He should have asked Americans to rally on behalf of reform--and bullied those in his way.
3. Misinformation is more easily disseminated than debunked. Washington is overtaking 20 percent of the economy! Grandma's survival will be decided by "death panels"! This will end Medicare as we know it! To misinform is to recognize and exploit the asymmetries of political warfare, and reform opponents understood this well. The Administration was not always good at explaining what was in the legislation (see #1, above), especially since there never was a White House bill in the first place (see #4, below). But having to explain what the legislation does not contain only made explaining what it does contain tougher. Misinformation works.
4. Have an Administration bill. Given the respective outcomes for Clintoncare and Obamacare, I'm least certain of this lesson, but it still seems to me that letting the Congress lead the process made it more confusing and delayed the outcome. At one point last summer, it seemed like Max Baucus was running the entire show, rather than the White House. And it was hard for proponents to defend reform because it was impossible to say what exactly the Administration supported. Multiple versions of legislation also invited legitimate complaints from opponents that it was difficult to respond to "healthcare reform" as proposed because it was in fact a moving target of bills and amendments in both chambers. I understand the need to defer and respect Congress. But this is politics in the modern, presidential-centered era, not the 19th century.
5. Proxying process for policy works. You know that old legal maxim about arguing the facts when the law is against you, and arguing the law when the facts are against you? The political equivalent is to focus on process when a policy's popularity works against you. Rather than engage in point-by-point debate about healthcare costs or access, Republicans and conservatives very smartly pointed to congressional deal-making (Cornhusker Kickback!), transparency (televised hearings in Congress), bipartisan inclusion (We want a summit!), and, most galling yet effective, bemoaned that a policy reform which was six decades in the making, discussed for two years during the last presidential campaign, and debated for the past year or so has somehow been "rammed through." I don't remember these arguments, or debt-minded Tea Party "patriots" making these arguments during the debates over Bush tax cuts or Medicare Prescription Part D legislation. But give credit where credit is due: Focusing on process was very, very smart politics by the GOP because it's always easier to sway busy, rationally ignorant voters seeking informational shortcuts for understanding a complex policy proposal by redirecting their attention to an easily-understood deal cut by a Louisiana senator as proof that the policy proposal itself is rotten.
6. It pays to hold out. Ben Nelson, Olympia Snowe, Joe Lieberman, Mary Landrieu, Bart Stupak, Dennis Kucinich, Eric Massa--need I say more? OK, we can scratch Massa, but you get the point: In this town, the squeaky wheels get the political lube jobs.
7. Bipartisanship is a waste of time—except as a tactical feint. After the Scott Brown rebuke, Obama basically said, "Fine, I'll meet publicly with my Republican opponents." He proceeded to spank them pretty solidly. But in the end, as it was from the beginning, he wasn't going to get any support from them. And frankly, as I have long maintained, it didn't make sense for the GOP to sign on to the Administration's efforts anyway, because they would get no credit and stand to benefit considerably from playing the blame game if the public hates reform. However, the recent lip service the Administration paid to bipartisan cooperation, from the meeting in Baltimore to the health care summit, did help because it provided a patina of procedural fairness and gave the media a counter-story that focused on befuddled GOP elites instead of Tea Partiers. But there were never any votes to be mined from reaching out the hand of bipartisanship, and hopefully the Administration will remember that next time.
Putting the policy and its implications aside, what political lessons can we takeaway from the past year? Plenty, some of them rather disconcerting.
1. Non-incremental policy change is never easy. Presidents since Harry Truman have been trying to solve our healthcare problems. Following Scott Brown's tectonic election in Massachusetts, President Barack Obama was correct when he reminded the nation how politically risky and damaging it was for him to tackle healthcare reform in the first place. But whatever credit he deserves for taking that risk must be leavened by the fact that the White House at times did not seem ready to prosecute a message and campaign commensurate with such a major policy reform--as both David Axelrod in a fantastic recent New Yorker piece by George Packer and the president himself conceded in his State of the Union speech this year. Non-incremental change, especially on this contentious and complex issue, required a full-on assault by the Administration using every weapon in its arsenal.
2. The presidential pulpit doesn't bully by itself. The Washington Post recently ran a Sunday "Outlook" cover piece about how Obama's cool, dispassionate, intellectual, bridge-building style would be more amenable to service on the Supreme Court than in the White House. I like to think Obama's style is suitably presidential too, but until recently it seemed like the president was unable to get tough--that his conciliatory tone was not helping him or his fellow Democrats that much. If you presume there are votes to be gained across the aisle (or even within your own party) but reaching out a hand, fine. But given that the GOP was clearly signaling its obstinance no matter what--see Senator Jim "Alamo" DeMint; see also #7, below--Obama may as well have thundered away from the start. Say what you want about George W. Bush, but he always "asked for your vote" in campaigns and managed to move the public and the Congress on far less popular and necessary agenda items via stubborn insistence on his position. Obama's belief that his election was somehow a tonic for the type of politics played in Washington was, in the end, a fantasy. He should have asked Americans to rally on behalf of reform--and bullied those in his way.
3. Misinformation is more easily disseminated than debunked. Washington is overtaking 20 percent of the economy! Grandma's survival will be decided by "death panels"! This will end Medicare as we know it! To misinform is to recognize and exploit the asymmetries of political warfare, and reform opponents understood this well. The Administration was not always good at explaining what was in the legislation (see #1, above), especially since there never was a White House bill in the first place (see #4, below). But having to explain what the legislation does not contain only made explaining what it does contain tougher. Misinformation works.
4. Have an Administration bill. Given the respective outcomes for Clintoncare and Obamacare, I'm least certain of this lesson, but it still seems to me that letting the Congress lead the process made it more confusing and delayed the outcome. At one point last summer, it seemed like Max Baucus was running the entire show, rather than the White House. And it was hard for proponents to defend reform because it was impossible to say what exactly the Administration supported. Multiple versions of legislation also invited legitimate complaints from opponents that it was difficult to respond to "healthcare reform" as proposed because it was in fact a moving target of bills and amendments in both chambers. I understand the need to defer and respect Congress. But this is politics in the modern, presidential-centered era, not the 19th century.
5. Proxying process for policy works. You know that old legal maxim about arguing the facts when the law is against you, and arguing the law when the facts are against you? The political equivalent is to focus on process when a policy's popularity works against you. Rather than engage in point-by-point debate about healthcare costs or access, Republicans and conservatives very smartly pointed to congressional deal-making (Cornhusker Kickback!), transparency (televised hearings in Congress), bipartisan inclusion (We want a summit!), and, most galling yet effective, bemoaned that a policy reform which was six decades in the making, discussed for two years during the last presidential campaign, and debated for the past year or so has somehow been "rammed through." I don't remember these arguments, or debt-minded Tea Party "patriots" making these arguments during the debates over Bush tax cuts or Medicare Prescription Part D legislation. But give credit where credit is due: Focusing on process was very, very smart politics by the GOP because it's always easier to sway busy, rationally ignorant voters seeking informational shortcuts for understanding a complex policy proposal by redirecting their attention to an easily-understood deal cut by a Louisiana senator as proof that the policy proposal itself is rotten.
6. It pays to hold out. Ben Nelson, Olympia Snowe, Joe Lieberman, Mary Landrieu, Bart Stupak, Dennis Kucinich, Eric Massa--need I say more? OK, we can scratch Massa, but you get the point: In this town, the squeaky wheels get the political lube jobs.
7. Bipartisanship is a waste of time—except as a tactical feint. After the Scott Brown rebuke, Obama basically said, "Fine, I'll meet publicly with my Republican opponents." He proceeded to spank them pretty solidly. But in the end, as it was from the beginning, he wasn't going to get any support from them. And frankly, as I have long maintained, it didn't make sense for the GOP to sign on to the Administration's efforts anyway, because they would get no credit and stand to benefit considerably from playing the blame game if the public hates reform. However, the recent lip service the Administration paid to bipartisan cooperation, from the meeting in Baltimore to the health care summit, did help because it provided a patina of procedural fairness and gave the media a counter-story that focused on befuddled GOP elites instead of Tea Partiers. But there were never any votes to be mined from reaching out the hand of bipartisanship, and hopefully the Administration will remember that next time.
Stupak to Vote Yes?
@ 1:12 PM
4:08 PM. Indeed, Stupak says they have a deal. Pop the champagne. The text of the White House's Executive Order is here.
3:51 PM. Several press accounts now say a deal has been reached and will be announced at the 4 PM conference.
3:35 PM. Stupak will hold a presser at 4 PM. Henry Waxman sounded some pretty optimistic notes in an impromptu interview with CNN -- but not much longer to wait now.
3:05 PM. A CNN producer caught up with Stupak about 15 minutes ago as he was headed back to his office -- he was somewhat hesitant to speak with her, and suggested that he was "getting there" and "trying to get it done" -- but there's still no deal yet. Keep in mind that, while the CW is to speak of the Stupak voters as a "bloc", the 8 or 10 representatives in this group have different incentives and might want somewhat different language out of the White House ... some wanting nothing more than the thinnest leaf of cover to vote for the bill and others probably looking for any excuse not to vote for it.
2:02 PM. CNN's Dana Bash providing a little bit more clarity on her earlier reporting -- saying that Stupak had told her that he was very close and was negotiating directly with White House lawyers -- but no new news, really, and until we hear something from Stupak himself, there are no guarantees.
1:43 PM. FOX's Major Garrett, confirming CNN, reports (via Twitter) that Stupak's office tells him that they have not yet reached a deal over executive order language.
1:35 PM. CNN is also reporting that John Tanner, another retiring Democrat who voted no originally, will maintain his no vote -- making it more important for Democrats to pick off some members of the Stupak bloc.
1:23 PM. Indeed, there's some contradictory reporting on this, with Politico also saying that Stupak is a yes but CNN saying they've heard from his office that he's not there yet. What's less ambiguous is that Marcy Kaptur and Brian Baird have now said they'll vote for the bill, which would bring the Democrats pretty close to their target even without Stupak.
1:12 PM. At this point, we're sort of out of the period in which any kind of arm's-length analysis is going to do very much good and it's mostly up to the reporters -- one of which I am not. On that front, MSNBC is reporting that Bart Stupak will in fact vote for the bill, probably in exchange for an executive order which would be issued by the White House to clarify the scope of the bill's abortion language. If Stupak votes for the bill, it's a safe bet that several other members of his "bloc" (which had already been whittled down some) will too, and that the bill will pass with a margin of a few votes to spare -- probably giving Democrats enough of a cushion to avoid any last-minute shenanigans on the floor. Still, Stupak has not yet confirmed this himself.
It looks very, very good, in other words, but stranger things have happened...
3:51 PM. Several press accounts now say a deal has been reached and will be announced at the 4 PM conference.
3:35 PM. Stupak will hold a presser at 4 PM. Henry Waxman sounded some pretty optimistic notes in an impromptu interview with CNN -- but not much longer to wait now.
3:05 PM. A CNN producer caught up with Stupak about 15 minutes ago as he was headed back to his office -- he was somewhat hesitant to speak with her, and suggested that he was "getting there" and "trying to get it done" -- but there's still no deal yet. Keep in mind that, while the CW is to speak of the Stupak voters as a "bloc", the 8 or 10 representatives in this group have different incentives and might want somewhat different language out of the White House ... some wanting nothing more than the thinnest leaf of cover to vote for the bill and others probably looking for any excuse not to vote for it.
2:02 PM. CNN's Dana Bash providing a little bit more clarity on her earlier reporting -- saying that Stupak had told her that he was very close and was negotiating directly with White House lawyers -- but no new news, really, and until we hear something from Stupak himself, there are no guarantees.
1:43 PM. FOX's Major Garrett, confirming CNN, reports (via Twitter) that Stupak's office tells him that they have not yet reached a deal over executive order language.
1:35 PM. CNN is also reporting that John Tanner, another retiring Democrat who voted no originally, will maintain his no vote -- making it more important for Democrats to pick off some members of the Stupak bloc.
1:23 PM. Indeed, there's some contradictory reporting on this, with Politico also saying that Stupak is a yes but CNN saying they've heard from his office that he's not there yet. What's less ambiguous is that Marcy Kaptur and Brian Baird have now said they'll vote for the bill, which would bring the Democrats pretty close to their target even without Stupak.
1:12 PM. At this point, we're sort of out of the period in which any kind of arm's-length analysis is going to do very much good and it's mostly up to the reporters -- one of which I am not. On that front, MSNBC is reporting that Bart Stupak will in fact vote for the bill, probably in exchange for an executive order which would be issued by the White House to clarify the scope of the bill's abortion language. If Stupak votes for the bill, it's a safe bet that several other members of his "bloc" (which had already been whittled down some) will too, and that the bill will pass with a margin of a few votes to spare -- probably giving Democrats enough of a cushion to avoid any last-minute shenanigans on the floor. Still, Stupak has not yet confirmed this himself.
It looks very, very good, in other words, but stranger things have happened...
3.20.2010
The Margolies-Mezvinsky Goes To...
@ 5:16 PM
NOTE: I will be out at a benefit in New Jersey tonight, but will be following the health care proceedings (and the basketball tournament) from my phone. And you can follow me on Twitter.
____
Any analysis of the political ramifications of the passage of health care reform probably needs to separate out the macro-level effects (the impact on the overall political environment for the Democrats) from the micro ones (the effect on individual races -- particularly in the context to each individual member's vote). One potential effect, for instance, is that the political environment for the Democrats will be somewhat improved nationwide versus the world in which the healthcare negotiations had collapsed, but that some individual members who voted for their bill are imperiled.
Here, in any event, is a rudimentary estimate of the Democrats that might be taking the biggest risk with their yes votes. I've built a risk index starting by taking the district's PVI -- for example, I'd score an R+3 district at 3 points, or a D+2 district at -2 points. Then, I add or subtract points based on the race ratings from Cook Political, CQ, Rothenberg, and Larry Sabato: +5 points for a toss-up (or lean Republican) race, -5 points for a likely Democratic hold, -10 points for a safe Democratic seat, and 0 points for leans Democratic, which is assumed to be the default condition. (In cases where the ratings sometimes differ from forecaster to forecaster, they are averaged together). Finally, I add 5 points if the vote is a flip from no to yes. Democrats who are retiring from electoral politics are not considered.
The gutsiest/riskiest yes vote appears to be from Betsy Markey, who is in an R+6 district that is rated as a pure toss-up by all the forecasters, and who originally voted no before announcing her intention to switch a couple of days ago. If she loses her seat, she will probably be the most deserving of comparisons to Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky, who cast the deciding vote in the Clinton budget in 1994 and lost her seat soon thereafter (and says she'd gladly do the same thing again.)
Obviously, the votes have not been cast yet, so these reflect my best guesses as to who will vote yes.
____
Any analysis of the political ramifications of the passage of health care reform probably needs to separate out the macro-level effects (the impact on the overall political environment for the Democrats) from the micro ones (the effect on individual races -- particularly in the context to each individual member's vote). One potential effect, for instance, is that the political environment for the Democrats will be somewhat improved nationwide versus the world in which the healthcare negotiations had collapsed, but that some individual members who voted for their bill are imperiled.
Here, in any event, is a rudimentary estimate of the Democrats that might be taking the biggest risk with their yes votes. I've built a risk index starting by taking the district's PVI -- for example, I'd score an R+3 district at 3 points, or a D+2 district at -2 points. Then, I add or subtract points based on the race ratings from Cook Political, CQ, Rothenberg, and Larry Sabato: +5 points for a toss-up (or lean Republican) race, -5 points for a likely Democratic hold, -10 points for a safe Democratic seat, and 0 points for leans Democratic, which is assumed to be the default condition. (In cases where the ratings sometimes differ from forecaster to forecaster, they are averaged together). Finally, I add 5 points if the vote is a flip from no to yes. Democrats who are retiring from electoral politics are not considered.
The gutsiest/riskiest yes vote appears to be from Betsy Markey, who is in an R+6 district that is rated as a pure toss-up by all the forecasters, and who originally voted no before announcing her intention to switch a couple of days ago. If she loses her seat, she will probably be the most deserving of comparisons to Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky, who cast the deciding vote in the Clinton budget in 1994 and lost her seat soon thereafter (and says she'd gladly do the same thing again.)
Obviously, the votes have not been cast yet, so these reflect my best guesses as to who will vote yes.
It's Complicated!
@ 1:49 PM
UPDATE (3:21 PM): Per Jonathan Cohn, Steny Hoyer says "clearly we believe we have the votes" and per Josh Kraushaar, Chris Carney (PA-10) will now vote for the bill. Everything looks to be back on track. The Intrade contract -- now at 85 percent -- might in fact be a little cheap.
UPDATE (2:57 PM): Things look to be stabilizing a hair for the Democrats as the caucus made a smart decision not to use the "deem-and-pass" strategy to cast their health care votes, as pro-choice Democrats appear to be comfortable with the idea that Obama will issue an Executive Order on the abortion language (although it's unclear how many Stupak votes this will persuade) and as debates over Medicare spending levels appear to be resolved. I'd say odds for passage are up over 80 percent again -- but obviously this changes on an hour-to-hour and even minute-to-minute basis.
____
ORIGINAL POST (1:49 PM): As of about 5 PM yesterday afternoon, it appeared that the Democrats were well on their way to securing enough votes to pass health care reform. They had gotten commitments to vote yes from seven legislators -- Betsy Markey, John Boccieri, Alan Boyd, Bart Gordon, Susan Kosmas, Dennis Kucinich, and Scott Murphy -- who had voted no originally and most of whom (with the exception of Kucinich and the retiring Gordon) are in tough districts in which their switching their vote represents a significant political risk. It seemed highly unlikely that those Democrats would be willing to switch unless they were quite confident that the bill would pass -- since switching making a public commitment to switch from no to yes becomes an even larger risk for them in the world in which the reform effort nevertheless fails.
However, with 7 no-to-yes switches, the Democrats can afford at most 8 yes-to-no switches in order to retain the votes to pass their bill. And right now, Chris Bowers puts the number at 10 instead: the 8 most solid members of the Stupak block (Cao, Carney, Costello, Donnelly, Driehaus, Lipinski, Rahall, Stupak) and two (Arcuri and Lynch) who are prepared to vote against the bill for non-Stupak reasons (although Lynch is pro-life). Some people also put Marion Berry (Arkansas) in the Stupak group; I'm not sold on that that since Berry voted for the reconciliation bill in committee ("undecided" seems like a more appropriate tag).
Still, Pelosi has several ways to get to 216.
1) Convince the other two retiring Dems (Baird, Tanner) to flip and hold everyone else. It's surprising, given how many Democrats in tough districts have agreed to switch, that the retiring Brian Baird and John Tanner haven't, especially since Baird is fairly liberal. But neither has ruled out voting for the bill. The trick, of course, is that if someone is retiring, you don't really have that much leverage over them -- although things like Ambassadorships can sometimes be promised. In any event, these are the two "easy" renaming no-to-yes flips; there are maybe one or two other members that Pelosi could call on in a pinch, but most of the universe of potential no-to-yesses have either committed to voting for the bill or voting against it.
2) Pick off Lynch and Arcuri and hold everyone else. These are the two yes-to-no defectees who aren't members of the Stupak block. Both have resisted repeated calls to reconsider -- but the Democrats have the opportunity to play hardball with each, as Lynch could lose his committee and leadership positions and as Arcuri could be quite vulnerable to a primary challenge.
3) Pick off individual members of the Stupak block (and hold everyone else). The fact is that the Stupak block has never been totally solid, fluctuating between as few as 5 or 6 members and as many as 12 or 13. The statements that various members of the group have made about the bill involve varying degrees of equivocation. Someone like Carney, for instance, or perhaps a Driehaus, could still possibly be picked off. This may be one thing that Pelosi is trying to do by declaring that a Stupak deal is off the table -- a Carney has no incentive to compromise if he thinks that Pelosi will just cut a deal with Stupak anyway.
4) Cut a deal with Stupak after all. Risk-reward: you could get the yes votes as high as 220-223 (possibly including a Republican, Joseph Cao) -- or you could see massive defections among pro-choice Democrats and the whole thing collapse. Although Pelosi might claim that a deal with Stupak is off the table, it seems unlikely that it wouldn't revisit it if it's her only renaming option. (EDIT: There also appears to be an option #4b -- which is some sort of clarifying language on abortion via Executive Order.)
Obviously, none of these paths (except #4 to a large extent) are mutually exclusive -- nor are they necessarily sufficient if other undecideds and lean-yes votes (who have a number of unrelated objections) decide to complicate things for Pelosi. Still, the fact that there are several potential paths to 216 mean that the odds remain in the Democrats favor. On the other hand, the number of options also complicates things in another sense, since Democrats who might want to see the bill pass but don't want to vote for it might not be convinced that their no votes would in fact doom the bill.
You can also read Pelosi's statement that a Stupak deal is off the table in various ways: it could indicate strength (that she thinks she can get to 216 without him), or that such a compromise would be untenable to too many pro-choice Democrats, meaning that one of Pelosi's options is off the table.
The downgrade in the chances of passage at Intrade (to about an 80 percent chance of passage at this writing versus the high 80s yesterday evening) clearly seems warranted (I might go closer to 75 percent myself). Fundamentally, however, it seems likely to me that Pelosi has at least 216 members potentially willing to vote for the bill if their vote makes the difference between passage and failure -- even without brokering a deal with Stupak. That she has 216 potential yes votes, however, doesn't mean she'll actually get them. This is a very complicated bargaining process. The greatest risk, perhaps, is that the negotiations start to break down on multiple levels -- i.e. she's having headaches with some members over Stupak, with others over deem-and-pass, with still others (like Pete DeFazio) over Medicaid equity, etc. If that happens, there could be a sort of "run on the bank" as wavering Democrats seek to distance themselves from the legislation. In particular, if some seemingly solid (but electorally vulnerable) yes votes start to equivocate -- particularly no-to-yes flips that Pelosi previously seemed to have in the bag -- that would be a sign of trouble.
UPDATE (2:57 PM): Things look to be stabilizing a hair for the Democrats as the caucus made a smart decision not to use the "deem-and-pass" strategy to cast their health care votes, as pro-choice Democrats appear to be comfortable with the idea that Obama will issue an Executive Order on the abortion language (although it's unclear how many Stupak votes this will persuade) and as debates over Medicare spending levels appear to be resolved. I'd say odds for passage are up over 80 percent again -- but obviously this changes on an hour-to-hour and even minute-to-minute basis.
____
ORIGINAL POST (1:49 PM): As of about 5 PM yesterday afternoon, it appeared that the Democrats were well on their way to securing enough votes to pass health care reform. They had gotten commitments to vote yes from seven legislators -- Betsy Markey, John Boccieri, Alan Boyd, Bart Gordon, Susan Kosmas, Dennis Kucinich, and Scott Murphy -- who had voted no originally and most of whom (with the exception of Kucinich and the retiring Gordon) are in tough districts in which their switching their vote represents a significant political risk. It seemed highly unlikely that those Democrats would be willing to switch unless they were quite confident that the bill would pass -- since switching making a public commitment to switch from no to yes becomes an even larger risk for them in the world in which the reform effort nevertheless fails.
However, with 7 no-to-yes switches, the Democrats can afford at most 8 yes-to-no switches in order to retain the votes to pass their bill. And right now, Chris Bowers puts the number at 10 instead: the 8 most solid members of the Stupak block (Cao, Carney, Costello, Donnelly, Driehaus, Lipinski, Rahall, Stupak) and two (Arcuri and Lynch) who are prepared to vote against the bill for non-Stupak reasons (although Lynch is pro-life). Some people also put Marion Berry (Arkansas) in the Stupak group; I'm not sold on that that since Berry voted for the reconciliation bill in committee ("undecided" seems like a more appropriate tag).
Still, Pelosi has several ways to get to 216.
1) Convince the other two retiring Dems (Baird, Tanner) to flip and hold everyone else. It's surprising, given how many Democrats in tough districts have agreed to switch, that the retiring Brian Baird and John Tanner haven't, especially since Baird is fairly liberal. But neither has ruled out voting for the bill. The trick, of course, is that if someone is retiring, you don't really have that much leverage over them -- although things like Ambassadorships can sometimes be promised. In any event, these are the two "easy" renaming no-to-yes flips; there are maybe one or two other members that Pelosi could call on in a pinch, but most of the universe of potential no-to-yesses have either committed to voting for the bill or voting against it.
2) Pick off Lynch and Arcuri and hold everyone else. These are the two yes-to-no defectees who aren't members of the Stupak block. Both have resisted repeated calls to reconsider -- but the Democrats have the opportunity to play hardball with each, as Lynch could lose his committee and leadership positions and as Arcuri could be quite vulnerable to a primary challenge.
3) Pick off individual members of the Stupak block (and hold everyone else). The fact is that the Stupak block has never been totally solid, fluctuating between as few as 5 or 6 members and as many as 12 or 13. The statements that various members of the group have made about the bill involve varying degrees of equivocation. Someone like Carney, for instance, or perhaps a Driehaus, could still possibly be picked off. This may be one thing that Pelosi is trying to do by declaring that a Stupak deal is off the table -- a Carney has no incentive to compromise if he thinks that Pelosi will just cut a deal with Stupak anyway.
4) Cut a deal with Stupak after all. Risk-reward: you could get the yes votes as high as 220-223 (possibly including a Republican, Joseph Cao) -- or you could see massive defections among pro-choice Democrats and the whole thing collapse. Although Pelosi might claim that a deal with Stupak is off the table, it seems unlikely that it wouldn't revisit it if it's her only renaming option. (EDIT: There also appears to be an option #4b -- which is some sort of clarifying language on abortion via Executive Order.)
Obviously, none of these paths (except #4 to a large extent) are mutually exclusive -- nor are they necessarily sufficient if other undecideds and lean-yes votes (who have a number of unrelated objections) decide to complicate things for Pelosi. Still, the fact that there are several potential paths to 216 mean that the odds remain in the Democrats favor. On the other hand, the number of options also complicates things in another sense, since Democrats who might want to see the bill pass but don't want to vote for it might not be convinced that their no votes would in fact doom the bill.
You can also read Pelosi's statement that a Stupak deal is off the table in various ways: it could indicate strength (that she thinks she can get to 216 without him), or that such a compromise would be untenable to too many pro-choice Democrats, meaning that one of Pelosi's options is off the table.
The downgrade in the chances of passage at Intrade (to about an 80 percent chance of passage at this writing versus the high 80s yesterday evening) clearly seems warranted (I might go closer to 75 percent myself). Fundamentally, however, it seems likely to me that Pelosi has at least 216 members potentially willing to vote for the bill if their vote makes the difference between passage and failure -- even without brokering a deal with Stupak. That she has 216 potential yes votes, however, doesn't mean she'll actually get them. This is a very complicated bargaining process. The greatest risk, perhaps, is that the negotiations start to break down on multiple levels -- i.e. she's having headaches with some members over Stupak, with others over deem-and-pass, with still others (like Pete DeFazio) over Medicaid equity, etc. If that happens, there could be a sort of "run on the bank" as wavering Democrats seek to distance themselves from the legislation. In particular, if some seemingly solid (but electorally vulnerable) yes votes start to equivocate -- particularly no-to-yes flips that Pelosi previously seemed to have in the bag -- that would be a sign of trouble.
3.19.2010
Throw All The Bums Out? Bad Idea.
@ 12:34 PM
Fascinating little result from the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll: Half of Americans surveyed said they would throw out the entire Congress right now--including their own member--if they could. "The voters who supported the clean-slate approach largely didn’t care much about whether the Democrats or Republicans ended up in the majority," writes WSJ's Mary Lu Carnevale in a preview of the poll to be released later this afternoon.
The anger out there is understandable. But what's irrational is the idea that there is some sort of "permanent" Congress that needs to be replaced immediately and all at once. It's just not true.
Yes, re-election rates are higher than during earlier moments in American history. And congressional incumbents certainly have wired the system--through the use of franking privileges, earmarks, organizing the congressional calendar to allow them time to get back to their states or districts to campaign, and so on--to provide themselves many valuable electoral advantages. Campaign money flows disproportionately to them, and a self-feeding loop emerges in which invulnerable incumbents raise most of the cash, thereby deterring potential challengers, making them more untouchable, and so on. And then, every 10 years they use their political clout to carve up favorable districts that make them demographically unbeatable.
So these corpulent, corrupt and complacent reps are in office forever, growing more out of touch with real Americans every day, right? Not really.
Keep in mind that even if, say, 95 percent of House incumbents run and 95 percent of them win, that implies a net return rate every two years of about 90 percent. That's very high by historical standards, of course, but it also means that over the course of a decade only a little more than half of House members still there at the end were there at the beginning of that 10-year stretch. After all, a 90 percent return rate raised to the fifth power--i.e., after five election cycles--is about 59 percent.
And sure enough, if you look down the list of 431 current House members (there are four vacancies) sorted by seniority, only 198 of them, or 46 percent, have served in House consecutively going back to before January 2001, when the class elected in 2000 five cycles ago was inducted. Since then, 227 entered Congress by election or special election, and there are six other current incumbents who have greater total seniority but only because of interrupted service that began again at some point after January 2001. (Reps. Cooper, Harman, Lungren, Inglis, Bilbray and Rodriquez.)
But here's why the instinct to just throw all the bums out seems rational but is potentially counter-productive if not irrational: Even with significant turnover, the notion that members of Congress will be independent of the influence of special interests is a fantasy. In fact, just the reverse is likely to happen: In a Congress full of rookies, the interest group community will have greater influence because it has longer institutional memory and control over information. That's not just speculation: Studies of state interest group communities tend to show that they are more influential in so-called "citizen legislatures" where members serve part-time (see , and that states with term limits only tend to further strengthen interest groups.
There are no term limits on the interest group community, and no way to throw all those "bums" out at once. Sure, there are problems with having too much seniority in the legislature. It's also problematic when members become so insulated from electoral threat they lose touch. But the impulse to throw them all out of office should be tempered by consideration of the alternative.
The anger out there is understandable. But what's irrational is the idea that there is some sort of "permanent" Congress that needs to be replaced immediately and all at once. It's just not true.
Yes, re-election rates are higher than during earlier moments in American history. And congressional incumbents certainly have wired the system--through the use of franking privileges, earmarks, organizing the congressional calendar to allow them time to get back to their states or districts to campaign, and so on--to provide themselves many valuable electoral advantages. Campaign money flows disproportionately to them, and a self-feeding loop emerges in which invulnerable incumbents raise most of the cash, thereby deterring potential challengers, making them more untouchable, and so on. And then, every 10 years they use their political clout to carve up favorable districts that make them demographically unbeatable.
So these corpulent, corrupt and complacent reps are in office forever, growing more out of touch with real Americans every day, right? Not really.
Keep in mind that even if, say, 95 percent of House incumbents run and 95 percent of them win, that implies a net return rate every two years of about 90 percent. That's very high by historical standards, of course, but it also means that over the course of a decade only a little more than half of House members still there at the end were there at the beginning of that 10-year stretch. After all, a 90 percent return rate raised to the fifth power--i.e., after five election cycles--is about 59 percent.
And sure enough, if you look down the list of 431 current House members (there are four vacancies) sorted by seniority, only 198 of them, or 46 percent, have served in House consecutively going back to before January 2001, when the class elected in 2000 five cycles ago was inducted. Since then, 227 entered Congress by election or special election, and there are six other current incumbents who have greater total seniority but only because of interrupted service that began again at some point after January 2001. (Reps. Cooper, Harman, Lungren, Inglis, Bilbray and Rodriquez.)
But here's why the instinct to just throw all the bums out seems rational but is potentially counter-productive if not irrational: Even with significant turnover, the notion that members of Congress will be independent of the influence of special interests is a fantasy. In fact, just the reverse is likely to happen: In a Congress full of rookies, the interest group community will have greater influence because it has longer institutional memory and control over information. That's not just speculation: Studies of state interest group communities tend to show that they are more influential in so-called "citizen legislatures" where members serve part-time (see , and that states with term limits only tend to further strengthen interest groups.
There are no term limits on the interest group community, and no way to throw all those "bums" out at once. Sure, there are problems with having too much seniority in the legislature. It's also problematic when members become so insulated from electoral threat they lose touch. But the impulse to throw them all out of office should be tempered by consideration of the alternative.
The Progressives' Bad Bluff
@ 8:55 AM
Talk Left's Armando has a pretty thoughtful response to my post earlier this week -- part of a long series of arguments I've made -- that the so-called "progressive bloc" strategy on the public option was liable to fail and that near-variants of the strategy probably would not have made much difference. Armando brings up the counter-example of the unions who, he claims, "were willing to 'kill the bill' unless they received major concession on the excise tax issue" and indeed received "major concessions."
Let's look at this case, because it turns out to be pretty instructive. I can think of at least three fundamental differences.
First, the unions were worried about something -- a tax -- that was more linear in nature than something like a public option. Although there were certainly quite a few versions of the public option that emerged throughout the debate -- some much weaker than others -- it is a lot more on/off and therefore less easy tweak than something like the excise tax, on which is it relatively easy to slide around any of a number of thresholds. Nor did the unions get major concessions -- they got relatively minor ones like a $1,000 increase in the threshold at which the tax was applied, some of which have since been rescinded. Had progressives focused on something which was more granular in nature, such as the subsidy levels for working-class Americans, they might also have gotten some concessions, rather than coming away empty-handed.
Secondly -- and this is the much more important point -- the unions could make a much more credible threat to walk away from the bill. This is because, with a sufficiently cumbersome excise tax, the health care bill could reasonably be seen as a bad deal for unions, particularly for unions in the AFL-CIO family who tend to have older members with good health insurance benefits in the status quo. The unions were acting out of naked self-interest: threatening to walk away from a deal that would have been bad -- for them. Progressives, conversely, were threatening to walk away from a bill that would nevertheless have accomplished objectives of enormous magnitude and for which they've traditionally advocated. To claim that you'll walk away from a deal that would provide insurance to tens of millions of disadvantaged Americans and hundreds of billions of dollars of financial assistance to millions more is not credible -- it would be the rough equivalent of a conservative legislator arguing that she wouldn't vote to lower the capital gains tax unless the IRS's budget were also slashed by 50 percent. Why would anybody take such a threat seriously? Even if you were able to make the case that a bill without a public option was worse than the status quo -- and the kill-billers always struggled greatly with that -- it would be such a counterintuitive one (from the standpoint of "traditional" liberal values) that the counterparty in the negotiation would have trouble believing that you were arguing in good faith.
Finally, the unions actually had the more, rather than the less, nimble position. It's not clear that they directly threatened to kill the bill, for instance; they simply made clear to the White House that they would be very unhappy if the excise tax was not scaled down and let the White House fill in the blanks. The notion that the most daring, highest-stakes negotiating position is necessarily the best one is wrong in both theory and practice.
Progressives would do well to realize that their batting average in these situations is going to be pretty low. To assert that there should be an equivalence between those people on the left and Blue Dogs is wrong, because the position of the Blue Dogs is usually closer to that of both the median voter and (more relevantly) the median Congressperson. There are certainly exceptions -- particularly as political space is not always unidimensional. But in a two-party, plurality voting system like that in the United States, the ability of those on either end of the political spectrum to exert direct influence over policy is inherently going to be limited.
That's not to argue that progressives should just give up or cheerlead for the least-bad alternative. Certainly they have some leverage, most of which is not the product of any clever strategy but because of their importance (via fundraising, advocacy, etc.) in electing Democratic/progressive candidates. A more credible position, for instance, would have been to threaten not to donate to Democratic candidates if a public option were not included in the bill, something like what gay-rights activists have done over their dissatisfaction with the Administration's halting progress on those issues. This strategy does not rely on the trapeze act of enlisting members of Congress as proxies. Primary challenges -- although I sometimes disagree with progressives on their choice of targets -- are another promising pathway, and one of the most time-tested ways by which the "far" right has exercised a check on the Republican Party.
It feels good to assert that progressives just need to be tougher -- perhaps even to the point of feigning irrationality. These arguments are not necessarily wrong -- a reputation for being tougher bargainers would help at the margins -- but it misdiagnoses the problem on health care. The progressive bloc failed not because of any reputational deficiency on the part of the progressives but because their bluff was too transparent -- they claimed to be willing to wager enormous stakes (health care reform) to win a relatively small pot (the public option). That would have been beyond the capacity of any poker player -- or activist -- to pull off.
Let's look at this case, because it turns out to be pretty instructive. I can think of at least three fundamental differences.
First, the unions were worried about something -- a tax -- that was more linear in nature than something like a public option. Although there were certainly quite a few versions of the public option that emerged throughout the debate -- some much weaker than others -- it is a lot more on/off and therefore less easy tweak than something like the excise tax, on which is it relatively easy to slide around any of a number of thresholds. Nor did the unions get major concessions -- they got relatively minor ones like a $1,000 increase in the threshold at which the tax was applied, some of which have since been rescinded. Had progressives focused on something which was more granular in nature, such as the subsidy levels for working-class Americans, they might also have gotten some concessions, rather than coming away empty-handed.
Secondly -- and this is the much more important point -- the unions could make a much more credible threat to walk away from the bill. This is because, with a sufficiently cumbersome excise tax, the health care bill could reasonably be seen as a bad deal for unions, particularly for unions in the AFL-CIO family who tend to have older members with good health insurance benefits in the status quo. The unions were acting out of naked self-interest: threatening to walk away from a deal that would have been bad -- for them. Progressives, conversely, were threatening to walk away from a bill that would nevertheless have accomplished objectives of enormous magnitude and for which they've traditionally advocated. To claim that you'll walk away from a deal that would provide insurance to tens of millions of disadvantaged Americans and hundreds of billions of dollars of financial assistance to millions more is not credible -- it would be the rough equivalent of a conservative legislator arguing that she wouldn't vote to lower the capital gains tax unless the IRS's budget were also slashed by 50 percent. Why would anybody take such a threat seriously? Even if you were able to make the case that a bill without a public option was worse than the status quo -- and the kill-billers always struggled greatly with that -- it would be such a counterintuitive one (from the standpoint of "traditional" liberal values) that the counterparty in the negotiation would have trouble believing that you were arguing in good faith.
Finally, the unions actually had the more, rather than the less, nimble position. It's not clear that they directly threatened to kill the bill, for instance; they simply made clear to the White House that they would be very unhappy if the excise tax was not scaled down and let the White House fill in the blanks. The notion that the most daring, highest-stakes negotiating position is necessarily the best one is wrong in both theory and practice.
Progressives would do well to realize that their batting average in these situations is going to be pretty low. To assert that there should be an equivalence between those people on the left and Blue Dogs is wrong, because the position of the Blue Dogs is usually closer to that of both the median voter and (more relevantly) the median Congressperson. There are certainly exceptions -- particularly as political space is not always unidimensional. But in a two-party, plurality voting system like that in the United States, the ability of those on either end of the political spectrum to exert direct influence over policy is inherently going to be limited.
That's not to argue that progressives should just give up or cheerlead for the least-bad alternative. Certainly they have some leverage, most of which is not the product of any clever strategy but because of their importance (via fundraising, advocacy, etc.) in electing Democratic/progressive candidates. A more credible position, for instance, would have been to threaten not to donate to Democratic candidates if a public option were not included in the bill, something like what gay-rights activists have done over their dissatisfaction with the Administration's halting progress on those issues. This strategy does not rely on the trapeze act of enlisting members of Congress as proxies. Primary challenges -- although I sometimes disagree with progressives on their choice of targets -- are another promising pathway, and one of the most time-tested ways by which the "far" right has exercised a check on the Republican Party.
It feels good to assert that progressives just need to be tougher -- perhaps even to the point of feigning irrationality. These arguments are not necessarily wrong -- a reputation for being tougher bargainers would help at the margins -- but it misdiagnoses the problem on health care. The progressive bloc failed not because of any reputational deficiency on the part of the progressives but because their bluff was too transparent -- they claimed to be willing to wager enormous stakes (health care reform) to win a relatively small pot (the public option). That would have been beyond the capacity of any poker player -- or activist -- to pull off.
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