There were three debate frameworks during the healthcare reform process:
- Teabaggers/GOP office holders - These folks spread lies on the internet (mostly using their AOL.com chain mail forwarding accounts) about such topics as: Does the scary black man want to let old white women fall and not get up? The 'baggers moved overall public opinion a smidge during their infamous summer protests. I think we all learned in August that noise and lies, when put in a vacuum, can move opinion (I guest we should have learned that after the Swift Boat Vets...) Still, these morans - the same people who give their children Mtn. Dew because it has all the essential vitamins and minerals - mostly resided within their own echo chamber screaming at each other until their ears bled.
- The White House, Congress (mostly Democrats), Congressional staff, lobbyists (both industry lobbyists and consumer-friendly lobbyists), most of the left, etc. These folks were debating healthcare based on a framework where 60 votes was needed in the Senate. I'll call that framework: "reality".
3. The rest of the left. These folks believed (or were led to believe) that reconciliation was a realistic option, and therefore, that a strong public option was a realistic option. They also thought that it was the official compromise over single-payer. This non-imaginary compromise was officially hashed out by key players in the Daily Kos comments section, and since single-payer has at least 10 votes in the Senate (that's a strong negotiating position!), it was a great thing to negotiate away through non-imaginary negotiations.
Reconciliation was not an option. If you disagree with me on that, then please tell me why in the comment section, and I will reply with a Youtube video of a My Little Pony commercial from 1981 (seriously, check out RetroAds on youtube - cool stuff, including one that I've included at the bottom of this diary).
The myth of reconciliation poisoned the debate on the Left. It made them wonder:
"Why won't Reid just use reconciliation? It must be because he's corrupt/weak/stupid/etc! Every Democrat in the entire world has failed me. I will never trust anyone again, not even my mommy."
and/or
"Why won't Obama push for reconciliation? I think he's corrupt/weak/stupid/etc. That's not change I can believe in! See what I've done there? I've taken his slogan, and I've repurposed it cleverly. Where's my real change? There - I've done it again!"
The reconciliation agitators gave progressives false hope that they could pass a provision that never had more than maybe 43-45 STRONG yes votes in the Senate (a strong national public option) on an up or down vote (let's forget for a moment that using a controversial tactic would have probably lose votes and kill the rest of the great parts of the bill).
Instead of focusing their rage on a few bad apples (Lieberman/Nelson/etc), many progressive activists are completely disenchanted with the Democratic caucus as a whole - including folks like Bernie Sanders - because they were misled by folks who had an interest in seeing a progressive rebellion. In an off year (2009) with no one to primary and very few GOP officeholders, I think that people needed a boogeyman. Obama actually made a great boogeyman, because the wounds from the poisonous 2008 primaries really haven't healed as much as we've been led to believe...the coalition held together during the election, but it fractured a bit at the first sign of trouble. If you look at the leaders of the online insurrection against Obama, you'll notice that many of them weren't exactly fans of the man in 2008.
Instead of participating in the real debate (which ALWAYS involved securing 60 votes in the Senate), many progressives demanded that Reid push a bill that might get 50 votes. They took themselves out of the debate. Many others were simply disenchanted with the entire process, and chose to throw dung-balls at Obama/Reid/Pelosi/etc throughout the process. That's kind of sad. If the brunt of the netroots were united in support of the most liberal bill POSSIBLE, we might have a much more liberal bill, and we might have a more unified Democratic base, because there are great things in this bill. The problem is that the obsession with the public option obscured almost all of the other small (but important) things in the bill. Many folks are JUST NOW learning about some of the great things in this bill OTHER THAN the public option. It became a single-minded obsession. Someone told me on here today that this bill gave them 0% of what they want, because the only issue they cared about was the delivery system for insurance. That's an obsession.
The President and the major players in the healthcare debate were working under the 60 vote framework, and they largely succeeded.
MAJOR CAVEAT:
I'm very sympathetic to the argument that the public option push was a useful PR distraction that pushed the overall bill to the left. While it was never really on the table and was always just a small part of healthcare reform, the public option became so important to progressives that the process of finally scrapping it probably allowed the Senate to extract some concessions from Nelson and Lieberman. At least that's what Dean said the other day. It would have been a great policy. It was also an ideological sideshow and a proxy war against the insurance companies, but maybe that proxy war distracted them enough to sneak in some of the great reforms in this bill.
Still - it's not healthy to our party when so many progressives' expectations have been set artificially high by people who should know better. Many still believe today that the failure of a public plan has something to do with Obama's failure to use reconciliation, and therefore, that the healthcare reform's "failure" is a failure by a weak or corrupt President. It was a monumental task holding these 60 Senators together, especially considering that one of them is basically the scum of the earth), so I'm pretty happy with his performance. There was some weak messaging from Obama along the way and a few major screwups (mentioning his grandmother's hip surgery in the context of cost cutting, for example), but I think that on the balance, this is an effort we'll be proud of in 20 years.
After all, LifeCall was funded at $1 billion (second 28 is like crack cocaine)!!!
Doomsday version: