After catching up on all of the developments this weekend, it strikes me that we are seeing a variation of the detente based on the concept of mutually-assured-destruction that defined the Cold War play out within the Democratic Party. The White House needs a bill to pass and the attendant signing ceremony. The Democratic members of Congress need a bill to pass and be signed, especially those in the House, and especially the Blue Dogs, or they will be walloped in 2010 (see 1994). A lot of these same members of Congress are beholden to insurance industry money. The insurance industry sees that there must be some reform and have trained their fire on what truly threatens them, the public option.
The game is still afoot. The worst thing we can do is ease off pressure, both on Congress--allies and wet dishrags alike--and the White House. Ultimately, a deal will get done. Either we will get a public option because we got the House progressives' backs, the House progressives made everyone believe that they would stick to their guns and kill a weak bill, and the centrists (or enough of them) saw that the alternatives were allow the public option through or else to go to the voters in 2010 with nothing. Or we won't because the administration sees the more credible threat as coming from the centrists and gets the progressives to back down for the good of the party. There is a lot of money invested in (and airwaves devoted to) getting the second possibility to come to pass. There needs to be an equal amount of energy spent in setting things in motion for the first to happen instead.
Therefore, what we have is a massive game of chicken on all sides. Centrists in Congress (and corporate media allies) telling the administration to support a no-public-option compromise or they kill everything, taking down themselves and Obama with it. The administration wavering (at least publicly), unwilling to stare back and return the threat of mutually assured destruction via a potential veto of a non-public option bill. Some House progressives, meanwhile, have taken that step--threatening to vote no on anything that doesn't have a public option. Meanwhile, the Republicans are sitting back and hoping nobody blinks and the whole enterprise goes down in a ball of flames.
Here are the advantages, in no particular order:
- Obama wants a public option. In all of the hand-wringing, this has never seriously been put into question. He is absolutely likely to make what deals he has to to get a bill passed. But the fact that this is what he wants makes the exercise much easier than if, say, Conrad were the President and Obama a Senator.
- Pelosi gets to craft the House bill and will ultimately staff a conference committee. The work on the House side has been very quiet of late. That can change.
- The Democratic Party will do far, far worse electorally in 2010 if they pass nothing than if they pass anything--public option or no public option. I think all of the players from Conrad to Conyers know this. Those pushing for a weak bill are far, far more likely to feel a do-nothing backlash than those pushing for a strong one; Mike Ross's Arkansas seat would go Republican in a heartbeat--it was held by a GOPer until Ross won it in 2000--but Henry Waxman, John Conyers, Marcia Fudge, Robert Wexler, and all of the other progressive House members threatening to scuttle a weak bill are from safe seats.
The biggest disadvantages are the money and control of the airwaves that the other side has, and the byzantine procedural rules of the U.S. Senate. That and the fact that they want everything to fail, so any internal discord helps them.
The best whip count I've seen is that there are 48 likely yes votes for a public option in the Senate, 7 "swing" votes, 5 more "doubtful" votes, and 40 almost certain no votes (the Republicans minus Snowe plus Lieberman). There are, however, 8 yes votes, 9 no votes, 4 swing votes and 2 doubtful votes in the Senate Finance Committee. So, difficult but not impossible. And this also presuppose that the Democratic swing and doubtful votes would actually stand with the GOP on a filibuster.
All these folks understand is pressure and their own political future. It is possible that enough Senate Democrats are so in the pocket of the insurance industry that they are willing to let the whole enterprise, and the party, go down rather than get a bill with a public option through. And if true, we're best off taking what we can get, calling it a victory, and going after these people in primaries when the time comes. But none of them have been tested. The point of the current offensive is to get those on the progressive side to back down and not force them into that position. If we don't, they may yet fold--to the good guys for once.