The debate about the public option is astounding at so many levels. The passive-aggressive mixed messages from the White House. The sausage-making gone awry in the Finance Committee. The absurd kowtowing to an opposition party that is not only politically irrelevant, but not even listening. The fierce counter battles waged by the blogosphere, unions, and others to keep meaningful health care reform in play.
All of this is fascinating as political gamesmanship, but one thing I'm not seeing discussed much is this: the Democrats will own this bill, whatever it may be. And if it includes insurance mandates but excludes a public option, hundreds of Democratic Party careers including, in all likelihood, President Obama's will be driven over a very steep cliff.
I'll explain the obvious below the fold...
Rahm Emanuel is by reputation a man with the take-no-crap, take-no-prisoners political instincts of a savvy yet bad-tempered wolverine. But I'm starting to realize the guy thinks he's winning at checkers when in fact he's juuuuust about to get checkmated in a serious game of (regular ol' two dimensional) chess.
Isn't it obvious that whatever health insurance reform bill President Obama signs will be decried and attacked by 99% of the Republican leadership and the Right Wing echo chamber? Well, a bill that:
(A) requires nearly every American to purchase insurance, yet...
(B) doesn’t provide access to some kind of affordable option outside a ravenous, greedy insurance industry
is going to hand the Republicans a hammer so heavy and so hard that they'll barely need to lift it in order to smash to smithereens the (only recently repaired) link between Democrats and the middle class. And all the make-nice "Bipartisan" outreach won't mean jack to the Republicans at that point (as if it ever did).
We know damn well that the Party of No is champing at the bit to use the issue of Mandates against the Obama Administration and in the elections of 2010:
http://thehill.com/...
Does anybody outside of the opaque bubble that mysteriously hovers around Congress and various "unnamed" desks neighboring the Oval Office have any doubt that this issue will register with lots of ordinary voters? And not just tea baggers, Deathers, and Fox News Know-Nothings, but nearly anybody who's felt the effects of the recession; the underemployed, the under-insured, working moms, young people, and a whole bunch of other "demographics" that trended Blue last year.
Democrats are already bracing themselves to lose a few votes in the House in 2010. But with this issue as a weapon, Republicans can change that trickle into a political bloodbath. It'll start with the Harry Reid's of the world (and some of us here might applaud that) but a lot of otherwise winnable elections and good candidates will go down the tubes in the process too.
And if an actual, viable public option isn't part of the bill, pray tell, how much energy, support, money and votes will be generated for Democrats via the Progressive wing, the blogosphere, the labor unions, etc, in the upcoming battle for control of Congress? Uh, not a hell of a lot, I'd guess.
If Democrats don't do the Right Thing on this issue; and let's not kid ourselves, "conservative" (i.e. corporate) Democrats are the real problem here, not the all but disempowered Republicans; the Party of Blue will discover that a large segment of the very same people who played a major role in carrying Obama to the White House are... over... this... bullshit.
Moreover, if it's perceived by ordinary folks that they now have to shell out a large chunk of change because Democrats bent over backwards to funnel money into the insurance industry (not to mention the banking industry, Wall Street, etc), while leaving them hung out to dry, Barack Obama's presidency will be effectively over. Truth or jive, that is the narrative the Republicans will be selling, and the forces who would otherwise be willing to push back and defend Obama will either be severely lacking in enthusiasm or off the bus altogether.
The Public Option is not only good and widely popular policy, it's passage would provide solid political protection to the Democratic Party and the Obama Administration, as well as energize the "base" that played a major role in winning the White House and large majorities in both Houses in the first place. Without it, I see a Bad Moon a-risin'.
I read that in a White House meeting yesterday Rahm Emanuel warned labor leaders that they
"... really don’t want to be looked upon as the group that stopped meaningful health-care reform,”
I assume this is because unions decried the Finance Committee bill and persist in calling for a public option.
Well, I doubt that Rahm wants to be looked upon as the knucklehead who snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, squandered the largest majority in Congress in 30 years and helped shatter his own political party into squabbling fragments.