I believe that the Democrats in the US Senate have rigged the health care bill to fail from the beginning. Here is why.
Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton campaigned on health care so fervently that when either of them got elected they had no choice but to move on it aggressively. But they could not have assumed two years ago that they would have the luxury of a 60-40 majority. What if they only had 55 seats? or 59 seats? Are we now to believe that no one had a plan for these, very likely, scenarios? They just assumed 60 votes were sitting there? Doubtful.
However, by the grace of God, the Democrats got their 60 seat majority, This was probably good, although not essential, for those rigging the process because it allowed them to make 60 the big number and not just 51.
And they knew from the day that got it how fragile the 60 seat majority was: Ted Kennedy's seat would be up for election and Robert Byrd was living at home, perhaps on borrowed time. So what do the Democrats do? This: Slow walk the bill through the Baucus committee, waiting, praying, hoping for Republican support that was not even required. Then The House played games with the Stupak Amendment. Then Republicans helped out on the stalling in 9 different way. Then you can count on Joe Lieberman to delay the bill another week, and get it weakened all at the same time. Then Ben Nelson fiddles around with irrelevant clauses designed to make everyone a skeptic of the entire process.
Mission Accomplished, Ben Nelson.
So the weak bill that came out of the Senate had no chance to pass the House, by design. So then they had to do more tinkering. Weeks would go by before they'd ever send something back to the Senate who, needless to say, would reject it because it taxes poor people too little in the year 2019 or some fucked up Republican shit like that.
Stall it, slow walk it, delay it. Let health care appear to be happening. Let the process happen forever, if you want! But just never let it end. That was what happened and I doubt that it was by accident.
Then The Stallers got kind of lucky because Martha Coakley was a complete mess of a candidate. So, no more 60 votes. A "buzzsaw" just hit the process. Sorry folks! Brown made it easy: Robert Byrd didn't have to die, nor did The Stallers have to sit on the pot until next November, nor did Stupak have to demand that Roe v Wade gets overtuned before he votes on something unrelated to abortion completely. And they didn't even have to wait until the American public go so fed up with the process that they just gave up on the whole bill, which sadly would have changed so many of their lives for the better.
The Staller Democrats in the Senate, bought and paid for no doubt, didn't just watch this bill fail, they designed it to fail. Max Baucus, Ben Nelson, Joe Lieberman, Every Republican, Harry Reid, and surely several others designed this failure.
And they can prove me wrong by passing a health care bill this year because we all know that it's possible. But I know they won't. Because they already would have.
Obama got played big time and I don't really see a way that he could have avoided it, other than by not pursuing health care, which was not an option because of the Democratic primary and the demands of the Democratic base.