Spinning

How do you “spin” this?

http://michaelfury.wordpress.com/2010/01/23/the-ceremony-of-innocence/

it’s difficult to sense what sort of legislation is still possible….

Oddly enough, the current Senate bill is not only possible but rather easy to accomplish……

I thought you were a fan of it yourself until last week.

It will take some time to sort this out, to see how and whether health care can be disaggregated into digestible legislative bits…

No, it can’t. The Republicans made it clear that they were going to do everything they could to block HCR, and damn me if they didn’t mean it. Passing the Senate bill in the House is one option. Nothing is the other.

But more time on health care, unfortunately, is the last thing Obama can afford to spend. It has consumed too much of his presidency, and his political capital, already.

When you’re right, you’re right.

Jim:

Passing the Senate bill in the House is one option. Nothing is the other.

According to Dave Waldman, that’s not true.

Consensus emerges: pass a reconciliation fix.
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by David Waldman, Fri Jan 22, 2010 at 11:27:08 AM PST
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What consensus? The consensus to pass a “fix” for the Senate bill — which is what negotiators were talking about before the Massachusetts Senate election — but pass it first, and do it under the reconciliation process. ( link to step-by-step walk-through on remaingin options, including reconciliation )
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And where exactly is this consensus emerging, you ask?
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In the minds of sane people. As opposed to the minds of foot-dragging idiots.
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Which idiots? These idiots ( link to Politico piece on these idiots ):

There was some talk among Senate leadership on Thursday of putting together a letter signed by 51 Democratic senators pledging to pass a cleanup bill if the House would pass the Senate bill. But that effort fizzled when support for it didn’t materialize, insiders said.
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“The Senate moderates’ viewpoint is, ‘We passed our bill. We’re not going to spend three weeks on some other bill,’” said a Democratic lobbyist who represents clients pushing for reform.

We passed our bill? Seriously? Nevermind that we’ve gone from “This is for my friend, Ted Kennedy!” to “Aw man, three weeks?” (And nevermind that debate on reconciliation bills is limited by statute to 20 hours, which is why it’s not subject to the filibuster. Duh.)
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But that’s your position? We’re done? What were you doing in negotiations with the House, then? I’ll tell you what you were doing. Among other things, you were desperately trying to shed the embarrassment of what the other side took to calling the “Cornhusker Kickback,” that’s what. That was the giant, earmarked payoff you had to make to Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) in order to get him to release the hostage he was holding. The hostage being the fantastic bill you’re so proud of yourselves for passing, by the way.
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But the deal turned out to be such an incredible political embarrassment for Nelson that by mid-January, even he wanted it out of the bill. And if you’d take your fingers out of your ears for a minute, you’d be able to hear pretty damn clearly that that provision was absolutely toxic in the Massachusetts election you just blew. Even the incredible idiot Lanny Davis — someone whose professional career now consists of doing little more than writing articles about how much he hates bloggers — is able to wrap what’s left of his noodle around that one.
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But what’s the position of “Senate moderates?”
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It’s “Screw you. We want that in there, even if Ben Nelson doesn’t. Now shut up, stop pretending you’re a real house of Congress like we are, and pass our bill, because we have to listen to what the American people told us in Massachusetts. Or whatever.”
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Gosh, that’s so “moderate!” When are political reporters going to wake up on that score, by the way?
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Look, any Senator who doesn’t support moving a bill to address this issue is affirmatively stating that his or her position is that the Cornhusker Kickback must become law, or else nothing will. The end.
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Is that your Senator’s position? Call and find out.
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I cannot fathom the idiocy of this position. It is literally beyond me.

The only reason why the Senate bill as is comprises the only path forward at this point is that no Democratic leadership pressure has been brought to bear on the Nelsons and Liebermans and Lincolns and Landrieus and the entire centrist clique who have made the Senate bill such a riches of embarrassment.
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Neither the White House nor anyone in any position to send messages or take very public positions on the recalcitrant New Democrat bloc –the people whose blatant corruption destroyed any credible defense of the Senate bill as is– have signaled in any way that these bad Democrats can’t hold the process hostage any longer.
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The consensus amongst the rest of the Democratic Congress is to pass a reconciliation fix, but until Obama and leadership stop dithering and call out the New Democrats on their obstructionist alliance with the GOP, and admit what voters in Mass know –that the Senate bill is a disgrace– we’re stuck.
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The point is that it doesn’t have to be the corrupt Senate New Democrat way or the highway, and Congress knows it. The country knows, too, actually. We all know it.

Joe, how much time do the uninsured have? I guess you are an example of the MA results you interpret as I’ve got mine, too bad for you.
I want Obama to come out with a big FDR jobs program. He can still push health care reform. But he has to lead. The old bulls in the Senate hate giving up their turf.
Let the Reps vote against specifics like stopping the use of pre-existing conditions, ending the exemption of ins. cos. from anti-trust rules, not allowing ins. cos. from canceling ins of people after they become ill, and regulating increases in premiums and deductibles. The rest of America should suffer because MA. didn’t like the plan? Although, after election polling found many thought HCR did not go far enough.
Who will be pushing the populist cause? After all, FDR was able to do more than one thing at a time.

One would think that the fact that no one knows where this administration stands on the issues would make them a big hero to the Village centrists, who are now turning on them like wild dogs.

[...]  http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2010/01/24/spinning/ [...]

When you have to resort to deals like the Cornhusker Kickback, the Lieberman collapse, the union buyoff, you don’t have the broad support that’s necessary to put something like health care reform into law.

Very broad support from her constituents for a public option didn’t seem to impress Blanche Lincoln.

The only reason deals like those above come to pass is because there is no visible challenge to the Republican obstructionism. The press recites as gospel you need 60 votes to pass anything. Change the rules to make ‘em filibuster.

You will note in MA, the majority of those polled post election were not against the HC bill, they thought it didn’t go far enough.

Confusion indeed. I agree, although I have no doubt that the administration is in favor of HCR. I just lost track of what that means. I follow vaguely the hot button provisions of abortion (I am in favor of deleting all of those, even though I am prochoice), and the free floating concerns for socialism (whatever that means), but don’t really understand the whole thing. I have tried to follow KT’s posts on the issues but I have become lost in the fog.
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I know that the catholics and fundamentalists have really rallied against reform, mostly on the abortion issue. As I said, i would solve that concern in a minute. Abortion doesn’t cost that much for those who want it, and it is rarely crucial.
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I agree that Obama should lay out the issues in the state of the union address as well as the financial control measures he wants to install. Another point of confusion to my simple mind. The market has dropped dramatically over the last 2 days after his announcement of controls to prevent the piracy that wrecked the market in the recent melt down. Make sense to me? Not even.

On the state of the union speech, I am hoping that the Repubs get together to script who will make a spectacle of themselves and the event. That could be much more entertaining than the cheap display last year.

Well said.

the Cornhusker Kickback, the Lieberman collapse, the union buyoff…

The stuff you mention was all to get like 3 votes. That is complete opposite of a “broad consensus”. Taxing the rich got a broad consensus in the House. I would wager that taxing the rich would get the votes of 50+1 Senators and in functioning democracies that is enough to pass legislation.

The problem is that a “broad consensus”, like 55 or 58 members of the Senate, representing upwards of 60-70% of the population, is not enough to enact legislation, which means you need the support of a “broad consensus” plus an insurance executive (Nelson), an angry political nihilist whose is basically employed by Aetna (Lieberman), and Wal-Mart’s official Senator (Lincoln) to pass any sort of legislation or even name a damn post office.

“When you have to resort to deals like the Cornhusker Kickback, the Lieberman collapse, the union buyoff, you don’t have the broad support that’s necessary to put something like health care reform into law. As Karen has argued, that’s the most important message from Massachusetts.”
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I’m sorry, but that is simply wrong. People don’t know what is in the HCR bills (either House or Senate) because of the vast amount of misinformation and lies being put out by the opposition. When people are polled on the specifics, they mostly say “yeah, that’s good.” As Steve Benen reported the other day: “Over the summer, in the middle of the right-wing freak-out, a NBC/WSJ poll found that 36% of Americans approved of the plan. When the plan was actually described, support jumped to 53%.”
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2010_01/022063.php

Yes!

Paul–I still favor comprehensive health care reform and if that means the Senate Bill, so be it. But Pelosi has said she can’t get the votes for it in the House, which is more than a shame–it’s an indictment of House Democrats–and, if true, it means, back to the drawing board. That’s all I’m doing here: taking the Democratic leadership at its word.

It is shame that House is running away from Senate Bill and Dem Leadership is not trying to supplement that with budgetary fix for recon. route.

It is hard to understand that Dem Leaders do not comprehend how this is going to cost them in Nov. 2010.

Dems will try to pass a scaled down bill probably by summer or so. But they are in bind – they need to finish HCR bill business as early as possible, but do not have guts to do the Senate version; whereas anything delayed will be rightly attacked by GOP then, problems of infighting are there then too and it will be so near to Nov as well.

Taking HCR after Nov 2010 or after Obama re-election is an option too. May be White House is working on that. But Obama and his team have become so much part of Washington games, the same games they criticized all along, that they will not have even this much minimum decency and honesty to say so to their base.

The confusion what Joe is talking is all part of the plan – give the spin to public.

When Axelrod says there is no ‘rebooting’ he also meant no accountability. That is what this administration has descended into. Very much disappointing and Obama Admin. is down the road of ‘failure’. The amount of deceiving Obama and White House have done is unbelievable. Joe Klein is way too kind and differential to Barack Obama.

Thanks so much for responding to commentary, Joe Klein, it is greatly appreciated.

Paul and Joe, I don’t think that in this type of political climate it would be wise to pass any Bill at all without public support. I have been following the health care debate on and off the blogs all year, and I must say that the Obama team was probably not following the comment vector on the liberal blogs these past months. As the health care legislation moved closer to passage, as the Senate passed its version and as negotiations by-passed Conference and were drawing to a close, the rage on the blogosphere against this Bill, from left, right and center, was growing exponentially. I was asking myself how the White House and the Democrats could possibly claim “victory” with the passage of such a bitterly opposed Bill by the public–a rage reflected not only on the blogosphere but in public opinion polls. It is not very wise to pass legislation that meddles with one-sixth of the economy, in the middle of an economic meltdown with 17% real unemployment, with very little public support. On the eve of the Massachusettes election, I read the comments in the Boston Globe and was struck by how much the support for Scott Brown was related to the anger at what the readers termed “Obamacare”. I think the brakes put on by the Brown victory are a secret blessing for Obama. He doesn’t need to go back to the drawing board in crafting the legislation, but selling it to the public. He needs to put his teacher’s hat back on and give a few more classes on the economic, social and moral need for health care reform, and how this Bill achieves it, step by step. Yes, he’s already given speeches and town halls, but those just aren’t enough. As a professor myself, I know that complex subjects require endless repetition of the same points. He needs to hammer health care into our hearts and minds before he achieves it on paper. It is a fallacy to believe that passing this Bill over public opposition would be a political victory; I’m reminded of a line from the movie “Gladiator”–”Win the crowd, and you’ll win your freedom”. Win the public, Mr. President, and you’ll get your political victory on this and many other things.

It makes perfect sense. The banks don’t want any controls, period. The more Obama hammers this issue, and the closer we get to true financial reform, the more the stock market will go down. It’s a way of blackmailing the Administration–only it won’t work this time, because after 2009 the public no longer associates a health Wall Street with a healthy Main Street. What 2009 has proved is that the value of stocks doesn’t affect the well-being of the public-at-large, or the economy-at-large, for that matter. They can sell all they want; they’ve revealed their bluff.

Melissasouza,

If Obama included a well aimed jobs plan, that would bring Wall Street back up again. Increased Govt expenditure boosts the economy and Wall Street.

[...] Read more on Time Magazine [...]

Unless the WH and the Democratic leadership combined with a number of outspoken liberal Dem Senators publicly went to battle with the centrist bloc, at which point the differences would be exposed, and the parties shamed, since they’re responsible for everything hated about the bill.
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Unfortunately, the WH and the Democratic leadership can’t even go to battle with the Republican minority, let alone the New Democrat bloc to which they belong.

It will be interesting to see if panicky Dems are so floored by the “stay the course” messaging machine from the White House that they essentially force changes to the Obama agenda.

For instance, where the WH sees health care as very much salvageable, the rank and file don’t want to touch that subject for years. Where will the compromise fall? Who asserts themselves?

http://www.political-buzz.com/