We are angry with members of our own party for not working together on health care reform, but taking a look at the history of congressional votes might change how we feel.
There is a phenomenon studied by social psychologists termed 'in-group heterogeneity' that goes hand-in-hand with out-group homogeneity. Basically, people in a group are more attuned to the differences of each others' personality and tend to look at people belonging to opposing or competing groups as being all the same. This phenomenon occurs within the Democratic Party, and I think it is causing us to lose perspective of the health care reform effort.
I started by trying to find research on the relationship between FDR, his New Deal, and the Congressional voting record. I'm still having difficulty finding information about the voting record for much of the New Deal legislation, but I did find information on the Social Security Act, which I think has some interesting parallels to the health care legislation moving through Congress.
The most important parallel is that both are largely public welfare measures that everyone is to benefit from. They are federal, progressive programs that touch large portions of the economy. There are also negative parallels. Unemployment insurance, for example, initially favored white men, because the categories of jobs covered were predominantly performed by white men. Without the public option the health care reform effort is a boondoggle for the insurance industry and is detrimental to the poor, since the mandate for insurance will drive up the earnings of insurance companies at the expense of lower-income wage earners, much like mandatory auto insurance.
We expect that when the final health care bill gets to a vote, voting will largely by along party lines. If you look at the Congressional voting record for the Social Security Act, however, you see that a small minority of Democrats opposed the measure (4%), while the majority of Republicans supported it (76%). (See http://www.ssa.gov/...
So why is there zero Republican support for the President's plan, which calls for a public option (http://www.whitehouse.gov/assets/documents/obama_plan_card.PDF), does not add to the deficit, and brings the cost of health care down? I think the reason has to do with Republicans, not Democrats.
On the Democratic side, we are a party of a few progressive firebrands, but mostly keep the ball rolling moderates. On the Republican side, we have gun-toting bible thumpers, climate change and evolution deniers, FDR haters, historical revisionists, FOX news, pro-torturers, freedom-isn't-free-ers, anti-immigrant allowers, and the list goes on. In short, Republicans are a bit more extreme in their views on the whole, and I'm not just saying that because I'm a Democrat.
Nevertheless, Republicans are keeping their eyes on the prize of 2012. They think that if they look strong, refuse to cooperate with Democrats, and tout themselves as the party of the common working man and not big-government, they will retake what they have lost. They see that there is a feeling of cynicism and skepticism of government that has been exacerbated by huge war budgets, bailouts of "too big to fail" financial firms, increasing unemployment rates, failure of the automotive industry and the manufacturing sector, numerous political figures involved in scandals, etc.
Democrats, in their lack of strong leadership in the Senate, have failed to counter Republicans by being complicit. Rather than take the opportunity to do something significant, they are trying to keep their heads down. They hope that the economy turns around and unemployment numbers decline, that Iraq winds down, and that Afganistan is taken care of. Then, they think, the American people will see the Democrats as the healers of injuries caused by the Bush regime. But if none of these things happens, then Democrats are going to be in trouble.
We need to start blaming Republicans for not cooperating, and for pushing the wrong agenda at the wrong time, and we need to enact something significant. It's true that if all Democrats were on the same page and voted together, we would be a much stronger party, but there has always been some dissent within the party, and that is probably a good thing. Not all Republicans are the same either. Let's thank Olympia Snowe for having the courage to be the only person to go against her own party for the sake of her constituents.
A watered-down health care bill that merely gives the insurance industry more customers is not going to cut it, however. Forget about trying to be bipartisan. Republicans have already shown us that they have no intention of doing so. If they want to filibuster, make them stand up and talk about pocket lint for 12 hours. Do we really think the voters will admire that? Lets be the party that does something good for the country that has positive results historians and economists will argue about, like the New Deal, without asking permission from adversaries that merely want to gain more seats in Congress and retake the White House.