Okay. We've been over every tiny detail of the policy and politics of HCR getting passed. We know what it isn't, we know what it is, and we know what it says about President Obama--and, to be fair, Nancy Pelosi and (to a lesser degree) Harry Reid--that this thing actually managed to get across.
For months--since DeMint's delightfully prophetic "Waterloo" speech, really--we've been talking about what a disaster it would be for the Obama Presidency if HCR were scuttled, or if what ended up passing was such a minor bill that trumpeting it as "reform" would just make things worse for Democrats.
All this, we know.
(more below the fold)
What we haven't talked about much is the deeper impact of the process we just went through, and I wanted to touch on some of that here.
Because I see the victory here in terms of the dynamic of Congress as being almost as good as what's actually in the bill. It isn't just that Obama's numbers go up and that the narrative about Democrats "not being able to do anything" has now suffered a severe blow.
It's also that the Democrats have actually figured out how to win. How to stiffen in the face of the hysterical, poo-flinging nonsense that has come to be the Republican SOP--and its corporate media echo chamber--to cut the deals, twist the arms, whip the votes, take names, kick butts, and get their caucus to act like a caucus instead of a timid flock of chickens.
Let me say this: I hope this isn't a one-off, and I don't think it has to be. I have seen no sign that Nancy Pelosi or the White House told anyone in Congress that they would only ask them to go this distance once. I don't think anyone--in the House, anyway, and the special deals in the Senate seem to be evaporating as reconciliation has become the path--had to be bought. I think mostly, they got threatened: you're going to do this, or neither the Speaker nor the President is going to have your back, and god help you come November.
I think/hope that what we're seeing here is that after TWENTY YEARS of Democrats being scared to step out and lead, scared to stand up even for a moderate vision of a people-centered policy framework, and deeply internally torn by the sizable group in their midst whose takeaway from the Gingrich years was to be Dems in name only, but kiss the corporate/"market forces"/anti-government ring just as much as any Republican, we now have a successful example of what happens when you stand up for what you were elected to do--for a portion, at least, of what the people want, even if it gores the ox of profit a little.
I write this now because we are about to take up financial reform. That's no accident: HCR is getting wrapped up not only because it's right, because it restores the momentum of the victories of 2008, and because it confirms that our man in the White House is one badass dude who should never be counted out.
It's also wrapping up because the narrative of the midterms can't be about this mixed-blessing and controversial bill. We need the discussion of the details of this bill to fade a bit, while the fact of the WIIIIIINNNNNN sinks in and becomes a bedrock memory. But as Plouffe said in his ass-kicking of Rove the other day, politics is about contrasts. And the contrast we're going to start talking about this week is--or should be--that the Republicans are with the banks and the rogue financial industry, while the Democrats are socking it to them.
THAT's the conversation we want to have with the American people, starting now, just in time to get going for the primaries.
And with this victory, Democrats in Congress now have an established road map for how to win on this one, too.
I think that kicking the Republicans' asses twice on issues that are near and dear to their corporate masters and that the American people totally disagree with them about should be helpful in November, yah?