The Health Care Follies Continue

Back from being busy, and ready to declare Joe Lieberman a hero...

In a surprise setback for Democratic leaders, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, said on Sunday that he would vote against the health care legislation in its current form.

The bill’s supporters had said earlier that they thought they had secured Mr. Lieberman’s agreement to go along with a compromise they worked out to overcome an impasse within the Democratic Party.

But on Sunday, Mr. Lieberman told the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, to scrap the idea of expanding Medicare and abandon any new government insurance plan or lose his vote.
On a separate issue, Mr. Reid tried over the weekend to concoct a compromise on abortion that would induce Senator Ben Nelson, Democrat of Nebraska, to vote for the bill. Mr. Nelson opposes abortion. Any provision that satisfies him risks alienating supporters of abortion rights.

In interviews on the CBS News program “Face the Nation,” Mr. Lieberman and Mr. Nelson said the bill did not have the 60 votes it would need in the Senate.

I have no idea whether Lieberman is doing this in a fit of pique, is carrying the water for home-state insurance interests, or if he's simply voting on principle. My guess is that it's a combination of all three. Ezra Klein, in a hilariously partisan spew, seems to think it's all pique...

To put this in context, Lieberman was invited to participate in the process that led to the Medicare buy-in. His opposition would have killed it before liberals invested in the idea. Instead, he skipped the meetings and is forcing liberals to give up yet another compromise. Each time he does that, he increases the chances of the bill's failure that much more. And if there's a policy rationale here, it's not apparent to me, or to others who've interviewed him. At this point, Lieberman seems primarily motivated by torturing liberals. That is to say, he seems willing to cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in order to settle an old electoral score.

I'm all in favor of torturing liberals, if this qualifies as torture (and if it does, then I admit it -- waterboarding is also torture... and based on this standard, so is listening to Styx. But I digress.). This is ridiculous hyperbole, especially from the side of the aisle that had an apoplectic fit when Sarah Palin brought up death panels. I have no clue what fully motivates Lieberman. On substance, though, Megan McArdle makes a key point...

The progressives are, of course . . . well, livid is probably too weak a word. At this point it's hard to see them getting to sixty votes on anything. Frankly, I'm not sure that a majority of legislators want them to get to sixty votes on anything. Every time health care makes the news, its poll numbers drop further, and at 54-38 against, it's already dangerously close to "Republican landslide if you pass it" territory. Outside of coastal enclaves, Democrats cannot win the next round of elections with no one but their base. And independents, already against the plan, especially hate partisanship. This makes it especially unhealthy to pass a bill they don't like on a straight party line vote.

That inability to pass a bill is the nightmare facing the left; as indicated by the poll numbers, the bill is seemingly getting more unpopular by the minute.



(hat tip: Instapundit) In the face of polls, why are the Dems continuing on this path? Byron York clues us in to the thinking...

Just look at the RealClearPolitics average of polls, which shows that Americans oppose the national health care bills currently on the table by a margin of 53 percent to 38 percent. That's not just one poll that might tilt right or left, it's an average of several polls by several pollsters. And the margin of opposition seems to be growing, not diminishing. And yet Democrats seem determined to defy public opinion. Why?

I put the question to a Democratic strategist who asked to remain anonymous. Yes, Democrats certainly understand that voters don't like the current bills, he told me, and they are fully aware they will probably pay a price next year. But they have found a way to view going ahead anyway as the logical thing to do, at least in their eyes.

You have to look at the issue from three different Democratic perspectives: the House of Representatives, the White House and the Senate.

"In the House, the view of [California Rep. Henry] Waxman and [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi is that we've waited two generations to get health care passed, and the 20 or 40 members of Congress who are going to lose their seats as a result are transitional players at best," he said. "This is something the party has wanted since Franklin Roosevelt." In this view, losses are just the price of doing something great and historic. (The strategist also noted that it's easy for Waxman and Pelosi to say that, since they come from safely liberal districts.)

"At the White House, the picture is slightly different," he continued. "Their view is, 'We're all in on this, totally committed, and we don't have to run for re-election next year. There will never be a better time to do it than now.'"

"And in the Senate, they look at the most vulnerable Democrats -- like [Christopher] Dodd and [Majority Leader Harry] Reid -- and say those vulnerabilities will probably not change whether health care reform passes or fails. So in that view, if they pass reform, Democrats will lose the same number of seats they were going to lose before."

All those scenarios have a certain logic (even if the Senate calculation undercounts the number of potentially vulnerable Democrats). But each scenario is premised on passing an unpopular bill that hurts the party. Even if there's a strategic rationale for doing it, why are Democrats dead-set on hurting themselves?

"Because they think they know what's best for the public," the strategist said. "They think the facts are being distorted and the public's being told a story that is not entirely true, and that they are in Congress to be leaders. And they are going to make the decision because Goddammit, it's good for the public."

Of course, going forward has turned out to be harder than many Democrats thought. And now, with various proposals lying wrecked along the road, the true believers are practicing what the strategist calls "principled damage control."

But still, does it make sense? In the end, perhaps the most compelling explanation for Democratic behavior is that they are simply in too deep to do anything else. "Once you've gone this far, what is the cost of failure?" asks the strategist.

At that point -- Republicans will love this -- he compared congressional Democrats with robbers who have passed the point of no return in deciding to hold up a bank. Whatever they do, they're guilty of something. "They're in the bank, they've got their guns out. They can run outside with no money, or they can stick it out, go through the gunfight, and get away with the money."

Two thoughts. One, the "this is good for you" school of thought barely works as an explanation when we tell our kids to take their medicine. It's asinine as an argument to make to a body politic. The better argument is to explain to the public why the opponents of health care reform are wrong, and why you're right. The Democrats, even with the allegedly brilliant communicative gifts of Barack Obama coming from the bully pulpit and a compliant mainstream media, have failed to do so. When that happens, one should wonder about the substance of the message and whether the public simply won't buy it because it's not any good.

Second, the Dems as bank robbers analogy is way too good to pass up. Maybe Joe Lieberman is the only one trying to hold them back from robbing the public fisc, but my guess is that some of the other potential robbers are experiencing pangs of guilt.

At the end of the day, Obamacare isn't dead yet (although even Klein seems to admit the public option will need an obituary). The President is trying to call one more emergency meeting today to pull resusucitate the bill, and he may succeed. As Rich Lowry notes, Lieberman and Ben Nelson do support many core elements of the bill, and may still be brought into the fold.

Healthcare reform's going to be an albatross around the necks of the Democrats either way. The only real question is whether passing it makes it worse or better in 2010 -- I'm guessing worse for them, and worse for the country. Instead of slamming Joe Lieberman, they should thank him. But that's one thing I know won't happen.