Lucy, Football, continued
Matt Browner-Hamlin is shrill:
The New York Times profile of Senator Max Baucus and his role leading the Finance Committee towards a healthcare reform bill contains an infuriating nugget of strategic hindsight.
He conceded that it was a mistake to rule out a fully government-run health system, or a “single-payer plan,” not because he supports it but because doing so alienated a large, vocal constituency and left Mr. Obama’s proposal of a public health plan to compete with private insurers as the most liberal position.
God God, man! It’s like Baucus had never heard of physics before he fell down.
Seriously, the lack of strategic understanding by Democratic elected officials is mind-boggling. That Baucus is only now realizing the strategic value of keeping a single-payer system on the table from Day One, even only as a means to provide political space for something like a political option, is simply stunning. Of course Baucus, and likely the whole country, will pay for his strategic error as the public health insurance option doesn’t survive the Finance Committee’s draft process. After all, while Baucus may be making noises about not being able to keep the Obama-backed public health insurance option on the table because of this error in strategy, he is also conceding it as a means of winning the support of at least one Republican on his committee. Not because he needs the vote to pass legislation out of the Finance Committee, but because he thinks bipartisanship is more important than providing working Americans with universal health care.
Baucus’s statement about the strategic error he made (though in fairness this is a mistake that every Democrat in the Senate save Bernie Sanders has made, as well as most members of the House caucus and Presidnet Obama) is a rare admission by a senior Democrat that there is political value in the party maintaining strong liberal positions. The simple fact is that if the Democrats want to achieve their moderate goals for quasi-liberal, pro-business policy, they can’t have quasi-liberal policies as the left flank. This leaves them coming to the table with only one direction to move: away from their goals and towards the Republican position. This amounts to making concessions before you even start negotiating, by the simple fact that you have no margin for concession short of not getting what you want.
The not-all-that-liberal Baucus is looking at a bill that started from a position of compromise and is rapidly becoming something that even he isn’t very enthusiastic about passing. And if your progressive base is dispirited and your wise moderates are dispirited, well, it makes it a lot less likely that a bill of any merit will pass, and that there are strong incentives (read, money) for your Joe Liebermans and Ben Nelsons to be seen as the one who caused health reform to fail.
But don’t worry, Matt - it sounds like Chairman Baucus has learned his lesson, and I’m sure he’ll fight vigorously for a strong carbon tax cap and trade regime agriculture giveaway package just as soon as health reform is done.