The Health Care Follies Continue

Evan Bayh says the far left has taken over the Democrats...

If staunch lifelong Democrat and son of a staunch lifelong Democrat Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana is doing it, then it must be OK.

He's not yet joined the no-you-didn't-yes-we-did-why-didn't-you-call-for-help-sooner-well-hello-we-did-but-you-weren't-listening-because-of-that-inside-DC-healthcare-dance-Obama-wants-so-badly.

But he is warning that, assuming Coakley the Democrat is electoral toast come balloon-dropping time tonight, Democrats need to learn an important lesson -- and learn it quite quickly. Bayh, who is one of those gutless moderates who just keeps on winning because he listens and stays connected back home, says his party and president have simply abandoned moderation to push a far-left agenda that alienates moderates and, hello, independents, who happen to make up about half of the Massachusetts electorate.

Says Bayh to ABC News: "It’s why moderates and independents even in a state as Democratic as Massachusetts just aren’t buying our message. They just don’t believe the answers we are currently proposing are solving their problems. That’s something that has to be corrected."

Bayh, once discussed as a VP for the next-door smooth-talking guy from Illinois, predicts fellow Democrats will go into denial tomorrow if state Sen. Brown becomes U.S. Sen. Brown.

"The only we are able to govern successfully in this country," Bayh warns, "is by liberals and progressives making common cause with independents and moderates. Whenever you have just the furthest left elements of the Dem party attempting to impose their will on the rest of the country -- that’s not going to work too well.”

Barney Frank says healthcare reform needs to go back to the drawing board...

“I have two reactions to the election in Massachusetts. One, I am disappointed. Two, I feel strongly that the Democratic majority in Congress must respect the process and make no effort to bypass the electoral results. If Martha Coakley had won, I believe we could have worked out a reasonable compromise between the House and Senate health care bills. But since Scott Brown has won and the Republicans now have 41 votes in the Senate, that approach is no longer appropriate. I am hopeful that some Republican Senators will be willing to discuss a revised version of health care reform because I do not think that the country would be well-served by the health care status quo. But our respect for democratic procedures must rule out any effort to pass a health care bill as if the Massachusetts election had not happened. Going forward, I hope there will be a serious effort to change the Senate rule which means that 59 votes are not enough to pass major legislation, but those are the rules by which the health care bill was considered, and it would be wrong to change them in the middle of the process.”

Jim Webb pooped in the Democrats' refrigerator with this announcement...

"In many ways the campaign in Massachusetts became a referendum not only on health care reform but also on the openness and integrity of our government process. It is vital that we restore the respect of the American people in our system of government and in our leaders. To that end, I believe it would only be fair and prudent that we suspend further votes on health care legislation until Senator-elect Brown is seated."

And so, the White House solution on health care is... vote the plan through and get more combative. Man, get me whatever it is they're drinking...

The health care backdrop has given the White House a strong incentive to strike a defiant posture, at least rhetorically, in response to what would be an undeniable embarrassment for the president and his party.

There won’t be any grand proclamation that “the era of Big Government is over” — the words President Bill Clinton uttered after Republicans won the Congress in the 1990s and he was forced to trim a once-ambitious agenda.

“The response will not be to do incremental things and try to salvage a few seats in the fall,” a presidential adviser said. “The best political route also happens to be the boldest rhetorical route, which is to go out and fight and let the chips fall where they may. We can say, ‘At least we fought for these things, and the Republicans said no.’”

To be fair, that was written before Brown won, but still in anticipation of his win. However, maybe things are clearer following the victory. Unfortunately, that's not entirely clear upon reading lefty blogs. Josh Marshall is one example...

I cannot say this enough. The policy front speaks for itself. But the meta-politics is real. It's a big. But it's something Democrats have great difficulty with. For a whole variety of reasons voters clearly have a lot of hesitation about this reform. I think the polls make clear that the public is not against it. But the reticence is real. If Dems decide to run from the whole project in the face of a single reverse, what are voters supposed to draw from that? What conclusion would you draw about an individual in an analogous situation in your own life? Think about it.

"... the polls make clear the public is not against it." I realize that we have polls that say just about everything on this topic, but considering the Democrats just lost a Massachusetts Senate seat, at least in part due to health care reform, you'd think that poll result might matter.

Maybe Marshall is just trying to push what is the likely White House spin on this; Nate Silver did a well-written piece outlining this position earlier this week. I'll note the first couple arguments...

The pitch that the White House and Nancy Pelosi will make to the Democratic members of the House is a difficult one and will need to be extremely well executed, but is likely to consist of one or more of the following arguments:

(1) President Obama can deliver a home-run speech when he needs to and will deliver a home-run speech on January 27th that features a sharp pivot toward more populist economic policies, such as a bank tax, financial regulation, and a jobs bill.

(2) The White House already got the 60th vote that was going to be the most difficult to get: Ben Nelson's to push them past the finish line on health care. On most other issues, they may not have had 59 votes anyway. In other cases still, the White House will be more amenable to using reconciliation, which was designed for precisely the sort of fiscal measures they will be considering in the spring and summer. Scott Brown's vote may not be in play in the immediate term, but could be in the medium term, essentially leaving the Democrats in the same position they were before Arlen Specter defected. And the Democrats' shaky 60-seat supermajority was not doing them much good as far as optics and public perception went.

I'm not sure any of the arguments will work, but Obama's ability to deliver a home run speech seems to be in doubt. He may do it next Wednesday, but I would note that he hasn't done a really good one on domestic policy since... well, beats me. Obama's better tack might be to pivot to dealing with the economy, and hope it recovers over the spring and summer.

If the GOP is smart, they'll have Scott Brown handle the response. The guy looked the part of a superstar last night. Meanwhile, the left may want to read this apt summary from the right by Matt Continetti...

Nationalizing the election helped Brown. It led the Democrats to wage a ridiculously negative campaign that may have hurt Martha Coakley among independents. It turned the race into a referendum on the Obama Democratic agenda in general and health care reform in particular.

After the off-year elections, Democrats could cling to Bill Owens's victory in NY-23 as a shred of evidence that the Tea Party message could hurt Republicans. Scott Brown's victory exposes NY-23 as a fluke. The trend is clear. Independents have moved sharply right over the course of President Obama's first year in office, even in Massachusetts. Attention Democrats: Obama's version of change is not what most of the country believes in.

Evan Bayh, Barney Frank, and Jim Webb appear to be listening. But is President Obama?