This is a Netroots Nation tradition I could do without. It seems like when the larger progressive community is all occupied by something like a huge and fabulous four-day conference, we get a big ol' bucket of cold water thrown on the party. When we were in Chicago in 2007, it was the Senate, passing the bullshit Protect American Act, and then dumping it on the House and going on vacation, forcing the passage of the bill. This year, it was increasing hints, followed by massive confusion and very, very poor messaging out of the White House, that the firm commitment Obama made for a public option as a candidate and new president has been slipping. Oh, yeah, and Max Baucus, too.
The best news, as dday says in this being today's healthcare reform story, meant that we didn't have to be subjected to the "media obsessing over old conservatives shouting or people holding signs that confirm their ignorance." The return to policy discussion was at least refreshing, as was the aggressive response from the progressive punditry and politicians. Howard Dean tore up the airwaves with his pragmatic, optimistic approach to getting the public option passed. Key to that, the progressives in the House, who couldn't be clearer in stating that there won't be a bill at all if it doesn't have a public option.
Much rides on this stand by the House progressives, and it's a lot more than just this one piece of reform. Digby:
The Democrats will rise and fall as a party on health care. There is no margin in failure for any Democratic politician in this country, including Blue Dogs. And that is why the progressives, the safest Democrats in Washington, should stand firm and say they will not vote for a plan without a public option. If the administration understands that they will have no plan otherwise, they will have to accommodate their base and twist the arms of enough Blue Dogs and Senate Corporate lackeys to pass it.
The "lesson" of doing otherwise is that all the right has to do is unleash the teabaggers with a pile of unadulterated bullshit and the administration will cave. I know that sounds perfectly reasonable to these villagers, because the teabaggers are what they perceive to be average Americans, but here in the real world, that is a very dangerous lesson indeed.
That segues us nicely into the utter mess that is the Senate Finance Baucus committee, and the clown show provided in tag team by Kent Conrad and Chuck Grassley. On the Sunday shows, Kent Conrad just couldn't resist being the voice of doom, after all, that's how he keeps getting all this attention from the traditional media, being the guy that tells them how much trouble the president's bill is in. Now he's saying that, after three months of missed promised deadlines, the Baucus committee will get to finishing the bill up when it feels like it.
Yet even as the Obama team hinted it could accept concessions that moderate Democrats are seeking, one of the leaders of that faction raised another hurdle for the administration. He warned that Senate Finance Committee negotiators may not meet the president's Sept. 15 deadline for producing a bill.
"We will be ready when we are ready," Sen. Kent Conrad (N.D.) said on "Fox News Sunday." "We will not be bound by any deadline."
The working definition of "Senator" is "prima donna," and Kent Conrad's doing his obnoxious best to be the prima-est donna of them all these days. That's including proving his own importance as a vote counter: "The fact of the matter is there are not the votes in the United States Senate for the public option," said Conrad, one of six panel members involved in the talks. "There never have been. So to continue to chase that rabbit, I think, is just a wasted effort." Which apparently isn't going over well with leadership, if a disgruntled leadership aide is to be believed:
Conrad, a Democrat from North Dakota (pop. 641,481), is presumably assuming that a bill containing a public option would need 60 votes to overcome a filibuster. But even if that is the case, not a single member of the Democratic caucus -- including Conrad himself -- has actually announced that he or she would support such a filibuster. And a few Republicans -- Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine -- might not support it either.
"Senator Conrad should leave the vote counting to the leadership," a peeved Democratic leadership aide told the Huffington Post.
Oh, and yeah, HuffPo's Sam Stein reminds us that Conrad's pet "compromise" option the co-op, "has shown an inability to effectively lower premiums for consumers, a newly resurfaced government study shows."
The U.S. General Accounting Office produced a report on cooperatives in March 2000 that was mostly sour on the idea. Using five different co-ops as examples, the study concluded that on the key function -- lowering the cost of insurance -- these non-profit insurance pools came up well short.
There's also the little problem of the RNC rejects co-ops as just another "government-run" program. Which leads us to the "far-left(?)" Chuck Grassley, that guy who's the key to a "bipartisan" reform bill who won't vote for any bill, anyway:
In an interview today on MSNBC's "Morning Meeting with Dylan Ratigan," Senate Finance Committee ranking member Chuck Grassley (R) said he'd vote against any health-care reform bill coming out of the committee unless it has wide support from Republicans -- even if the legislation contains EVERYTHING Grassley wants.
"I am negotiating for Republicans," he said. "If I can't negotiate something that gets more than four Republicans, I'm not a good negotiator."
When NBC's Chuck Todd, in a follow-up question on the show, asked the Iowa Republican if he'd vote against what Grassley might consider to be a "good deal" -- i.e., gets everything he asks for from Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D) -- Grassley replied, "It isn't a good deal if I can't sell my product to more Republicans."
I don't know how many more ways Chuck Grassley can demonstrate that he isn't negotiating in good faith. That he's not going to bring one damn Republican vote to the party, if he can help it. Which puts the ball back in the Senate Dems playpen.
To say that no plan with a public option can pass the Senate means -- when there are 60 Democratic votes* -- that Democrats like Bayh and Baucus will have to stand with Republicans in filibustering a public option in order to prevent it from getting to a vote. Unless Bayh and Baucus are saying there aren't 50 votes for it, either, which is certainly something I haven't heard said yet.
Now, I'm sure it won't happen in the sense that neither Baucus nor Bayh are likely have the guts to stand on the Senate floor and do the filibustering themselves, but in order for their threat that no public option can pass to mean anything in the real world, it means that even if they chicken out on the speeches, they'll have to vote with Republicans when all the shouting ends. I'd like to see them put in that position and asked at long last where they stand, and with which side they'll cast their votes.
I think we'd all like to see that.