Everyone knows our politics, especially in the senate, is broken. When it takes 60 votes to bypass the perennial filibuster from the minority party, to all legislation, then there is a problem.
The majority leader, in this case, Reid, must keep giving away any substantial reforms in a bill like Health Care, in order to get it passed.
It is impossible to operate in this atmosphere and make any substantial progress or reform or movement forward.
This diary is about an article in American Prospect and my views combined. I basically have thought the same as what this article talks about.
http://www.prospect.org/...
"The most troublesome task of a reform president," Henry Adams wrote in his autobiography, is "to bring the Senate back to decency."
And we know this will not happen anytime soon. The senate could clean up its act if the public demanded it but, with the fringe teabaggers on the right being the media darlings and portrayed as mainstream populism, this small fringe group gets more credibility then it should. And we know their voice is about making sure the republicans stay as far to the right, bow before the alter of purity, and primary anyone who is not deemed pure enough. Sadly this is beginning to happen on the left as well.
American Prospect points out that Obama did not achieve his desired agenda in trying to bring the sides together and tone down the vitriol. But, they did note, as well:
But what he and other Democrats did accomplish this morning is something that eluded every reform president before him, and is in a sense, all the greater an accomplishment for the fact that the institution -- not just the Senate itself but the Washington culture that surrounds it -- was at its most indecent
they went on to write:
Every major policy victory, even though it creates momentum and potentially strengthens the president who leads it, inevitably comes with a cost. The cost may be an expenditure of political capital, a political concession due in the future, a sacrifice of a constituency, a compromise on some other policy, or a compromise within the policy itself. It's hard not to feel in one's gut that this victory came at a considerable price. But it's also hard to put one's finger on exactly where the cost is.
Prospect goes on to address the hyper-angry Jane Hamsher and others who wanted to kill the bill. And the response by Ezra Klein to her 10 reasons to do so.
Interestingly they point out that with this bill as a foundation, any improvements will not have to suffer through the hostage taking tactics of the conservadems like Nelson or the always betrayal leaning Lieberman.
An interesting view of the bill and the need for 60 vs. reconciliation:
But that would have required major pieces of the legislation to be left behind, in the hope that they could be enacted later, though they would still need 60 votes, and the tactic would have alienated even many Democrats, making the next steps impossible. Instead, by passing a compromised but complete bill with 60 votes, Democrats will have plenty of room to expand its provisions, and even add ideas like the Medicare buy-in for older workers, using the budget reconciliation process in the future.
One thing that is addressed is the process of the health care fight was that many on the left did not view this president realistically and projected their own ideas onto him (something Obama addressed many times during the campaign) and the unmasking of those who never liked and never really accepted this president:
Disappointment is the predictable flip side of the enthusiasm that swept Obama into office a year ago. And yet, an opposition that consists of Hamsher and former Democratic party chair Howard Dean is not exactly Ted Kennedy challenging Jimmy Carter in 1980! Indeed, the disappointment feels rather like that expressed by the anxious faction that doubted and seemed to simply dislike Obama all through his march to the presidency. As Paul Krugman, who was the most articulate voice in that faction, noted this week, this is the WYSIWYG presidency. If anyone thought that Obama's language about bipartisanship and compromise were just a ploy to get elected, and the fierce passionate liberal would then pull away the mask, they were deluded.
The sad thing is that with not just the far right but, the far left in open opposition to the president, and our senate in full dysfunction mode, any kind of initiative that Obama takes on, like Cap and Trade, will need 60 votes and there will have to be compromises. As such, the fringe will go even more and more into opposing Obama.
Obama has no room to move and cannot do any kind of real progressive legislation as long as the senate is in this mode. Where it will take 60 votes to pass bills and a republican party that will filibuster anything.
American Prospect wrote that Obama, instead of getting stronger with the passage of a historical bill, will be for the first time, a president that will have a cost extracted from that kind of achievement. Something that seven presidents failed to do and Obama succeeded in.
The last sentence of the article is something for us to think about:
The passage of health reform is a revelation of just how desperately that change is needed and how difficult it will be to achieve.
And when will progressives understand this, if at all??