We activists and political observers must understand that health care reform is a kind of drama, being played out slowly on a grand stage. By a "drama," I mean that various actors are playing out roles that may less reflect their own true wishes and beliefs than how they wish to be perceived by, and what effect they want to have on, others. (For citizen-activists, "others" means primarily media and policymakers; for politicians, "others" means primarily voters, media, donors, and activists.)
In a formulaic drama, whether buddy comedy or action-adventure or romantic weeper, there comes a time, maybe 3/4 of the way through, when things get "darkest before the dawn"; this serves to make eventual victory all the sweeter. That's not so common in real life, where victory is usually either impossible (as if we had 45 Democratic Senators) or much easier (as if we had 70 of them.) But here we are -- at the unhappy happy medium where drama thrives. The trajectory of our drama has recently become a little more clear.
In the penultimate act that ends, I believe, with Senate approval of a bad bill, I think we lose. Ultimately, I believe we win.
The key actor in health care reform is now Harry Reid, whose assigned role is to deceive and to betray -- first Us, then Them.
I'm not sure what Act to say we've now entered in this drama, with the partisan passage of the motion to proceed, but it feels like we're about halfway through the process. In my version of the play, Act I Scene 1 begins with nyceve's years-long diary series on health care -- would that more people had seen that one! -- and continues through the passage of the Tri-Committee and Senate HELP bills. Act II was Teabagger August through Baucus through Pelosi and Stupak through this vote. Act III is entitled "Just Out of Reach." Act IV is entitled "Hobson's Choice."
Act III
To appreciate the play, you have to understand the difference between Act III, which takes us through Senate passage of its version of the bill -- which has always been the primarily hurdle, thanks to the filibuster -- and Act IV, which covers the conference committee and final consideration by both houses. The difference is the motivation of the actors. That in turn reflects the difference in the stakes.
The critical thing to understand about Act III is that -- with one exception -- the details of precisely how it ends do not matter. The sole purpose of Act III is to get us to Act IV. That means that Act III is the prime time for politicians to grandstand. Why? Because we're far enough along for the public to pay attention, but not so far along that their obstruction is actually fatal to the bill.
To see how this works, put yourself if Senator Mary Landrieu's shoes. She is an actress, and a pretty good one. Her audience is the voting electorate of the somewhat conservative, Katrina-decimated, state of Louisiana. And what do Louisianans want? Someone who stands up to crazy-eyed liberals, yes. But, more than that, someone who brings home the bacon.
Mary Landrieu doesn't truly give a damn whether there is a public option in the health care bill. She may have her own opinion, but it is not what drives her. What drives her is how she appears to her voters. Do other politicians think it unseemly that she got $100,000,000 in (pretty well justified) targeted spending for Louisiana in the current Senate draft of the bill? Screw 'em. She doesn't care. The more abuse she gets from outside of Louisiana for her standing up for Louisiana, the better she looks within Louisiana, and that's what she cares about.
The goodies she can point to will be in the bill enacted by the Senate in (my guess is) mid-February. That's her price -- but at least she is what they call "honest crooked" -- meaning that when she's bought, she stays bought.
Unfortunately -- and it is damn unfortunate -- the critical actors in Act III are the swing voters, mostly ConservaDems like Landrieu and the least extreme (I don't like calling them "moderate") Republicans like Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins. Others like George Voinovich and George LeMieux have already been introduced to the audience as well, but if they end up taking a decisive role -- as did obscure Kansas Senator Edmund G. Ross, who ended up an unexpected star of the Senate's all-time top-rated drama, the impeachment of Andrew Johnson -- that surprise twist ending won't come until near the end of the last act.
Many activists want to solve this problem by creating new swing voters. It's not going to work, yet -- with the exception of keeping a version of Stupak-Pitts out of the Senate bill (and thus out of the hands of the conferees.) Yes, a progressive like Sherrod Brown may say that he won't vote for any Senate bill that doesn't contain a public option at the end of Act III -- but he will, and everyone knows he will, because everyone knows that the purpose of Act III is to get us to Act IV, and Act IV is where Brown and those like him have the chance to win. This is why I am not pushing Senators to take pledges about what the pre-conference Senate bill contains. The most important thing that that bill contains is a stamp saying "Approved and committed to conference."
Blanche Lincoln, whose formal title might as well now contain the term "Endangered Democrat," is not the deft politician that Landrieu is, but as an actress she has a point that she wants to make to the folks back home, and that is that she is both a Moderate and a Player. By being the last one to commit to support cloture on the motion to proceed, she has helped to make that case. Now, even though I think that it is based on a misreading of her electorate -- which is more liberal than Nebraska's -- her agenda is much the same as Ben Nelson's.
What is Ben Nelson's agenda? He wants to weaken the bill. And, because Joe Lieberman's presence means that he is not alone in that -- I don't know if he could or would do it by himself -- he is probably going to get his way at the end of Act III. That's what his dramatic interests require. But let's be clear: his agenda is not necessarily to fatally weaken the final bill, the conference report that will be reported out in (my guess) mid-January and voted on in late-February. (Similarly, I don't think that Bart Stupak has had any illusions that his abortion amendment would be part of the final bill; he's already had his grand scene as an actor by now.) For his part, Nelson wants to show Nebraskans that he fought valiantly and achieved a temporary success, even if he ultimately had to support a more liberal bill than he preferred because it was the price of enacting reforms like an end to pre-existing conditions. I don't like that; you probably don't like that; but we can live with it. We have to.
Those three can be handled. The big problem is Joe Lieberman, because unlike the others he thinks that he can win over the voters back home no matter what and he is perfectly content to see the Democratic Party in ruins if he doesn't get his way. When Lieberman says "no public option or I vote for cloture," I think he means it. And that is why, unless Reid has Olympia Snowe in his back pocket, Reid's going to betray us at the end of Act III. He'll do it because he has to.
Reid is as much an actor as anyone. He told us that there will be a public option in the Senate bill, and accordingly he has proposed one. What he deceptively didn't quite explain to us so well is that it may not stay there. Reid wants to give the majority of the caucus a chance to vote for cloture on the bill that most Democrats want to see enacted -- partially because he wants everyone to be able to keep score and partially because he wants everyone else to see that we come up a little bit short. At that point -- even as some bloggers excoriate Reid for his inability to control his caucus (as if Reid wouldn't, if he had a shock collar around Lieberman's neck, be hitting the button every fifteen seconds whether a vote was coming up or not, just to enjoy the wisps of smoke) -- Reid will come back with another, worse, bill. It will not contain an untriggered, opt-out at worst, public option. Its specific disabilities are probably even now being negotiated.
Thus will Reid (who always knew he wouldn't get 60 votes at the end of Act III) have deceived us and then betrayed us.
"Whyyyyyyyyyyy?" (The plaintive howls will resound throughout the blogosphere, shaking its very foundation.) "How could he do this to us?" Good question, but there's a good answer: it's because he knows that the only point of Act III is to get us to Act IV, where we win or lose. This is, I think, why he is not going through reconciliation: because he needs to give the ConservaDems this win in Act III in order to get their votes in Act IV. Even after the conference committee report, the final bill will need 60 votes in the Senate to pass, and he has a better chance of getting those votes then if he allows a weaker bill to be passed now.
So, even though he knows that following his betrayal we will be calling for him to be impaled, tarred and feathered, drawn and quartered, dipped in salt, and then battered and fried, he knows that that doesn't matter. (Should we overreact like that anyway? Sure -- because we want him to have our wrath in mind at the beginning of Act IV, Scene 1 wherein he appoints the Conferees. Remember, we're actors in this drama too, and our role is to make people fear us.) Why is he willing to incur our wrath? It's because he knows that if we win at the end of Act IV, most of us will forgive him. (It's true. Look it up. He has.)
To get there, though, he first has to get the bill out of the Senate, and here is where Harry Reid either earns his wings or doesn't: he has to deceive and betray the ConservaDems. He has to assure them that of course the conference committee will come up with a bill that will honor their convictions, and not to worry because liberals will have to vote for it in the end.
And he has to be lying through his teeth when he says it.
Why does he have to do this? So that they can later say that he lied to them.
In other words, here's the winning script for ConservaDems: when the conference report comes out, ConservaDems can tell their constituents that they only voted for cloture in Act III because Reid promised them that the final bill would contain no public option. Their defense, against their own electorates, is that that rascal from Nevada lied to them!
Or maybe he's not a rascal, they may admit. Maybe he's just weak.
That's why Reid has to set himself up to be rolled by the House. It's a roll for which he's well suited.
ACT IV
Forget what you know about math: 60 does not equal 60.
That is, 60 votes for cloture on a bill before conference committee, during Act III, does not equal 60 votes for a bill after conference committee in Act IV. Voting down the Senate bill with a public option in Act III just means that Reid has to go back and write a new version of the Senate bill without one, in order to send the bill to conference. With one exception -- the Stupak-Pitts Amendment, as discussed above -- what the Senate does in the bill it sends to the conference committee doesn't matter. So long as the bills differ, the conference committee can pick and choose among provisions or even fashion their own for the final bill that will actually be enacted.
Voting against the bill in Act IV, by contrast -- that's different. That kills the bill.
(Actually, that's not quite true. Reid would probably vote against it so that he could bring it up for reconsideration later. I may have been the first one to predict this, but I think that if Charlie Crist loses to Marco Rubio in the Florida Senatorial primary, his "agent" George LeMieux becomes our 60th vote. In any case, so long as the bill remained popular, I'd expect to see it brought up again in September to rally the troops -- especially in Nevada. But it will seem true enough.)
The bill, in Act III, is a work in progress. In Act IV, it's a Hobson's Choice.
People often misinterpret the term "Hobson's Choice" as reflecting a "choice among evils," a "no-win situation." That's not what it is. A Hobson's Choice is what we commonly refer to as a "take it or leave it" situation.
When the bill comes out of conference, very likely containing a decent public option -- and Nelson, Landrieu, and Lincoln express sorrow and a sense of betrayal, while Lieberman sputters and threatens -- the Senate will be presented with a Hobson's Choice.
Landrieu: "I'll reluctantly vote for cloture because this bill has so many good provisions for Louisiana"
Lincoln: "I'll reluctantly vote for cloture because I think that the pre-existing condition changes are worth even a public option that I don't support."
Nelson: "I'll reluctantly vote for cloture because I fought as hard I can and while I feel personally betrayed we still should vote on the cost-controls."
Lieberman: ... well, as I said, he's the problem and the possible reason for Act V -- if he wants to stand alone.
The key scene in this drama won't be on camera. It will consist of Reid talking softly to the ConservaDems, as he conveys the news from the Senate conferees that they will be including a public option in the final version of the bill.
"This is it," he will tell them. "Without some public option in the bill, we don't have the votes to pass it. Too many people are convinced that imposing a universal mandate without forcing this competition on the insurers will not only be bad reform, but it will also kill the electoral prospects of the Democratic Party -- especially moderates in the party. So I'm sorry. I don't need your vote for the final bill. I just need your vote for cloture. Will you commit to that?"
All but one of those conversations -- Ben Nelson, Landrieu, Lincoln, and Baucus, Bayh, Conrad, and Carper, if need be -- will go well. One won't. And it -- barring the possibility of a surprise twist -- will determine what happens in Act IV -- and whether there will be an Act V. That's the conversation with Lieberman.
Lieberman is different from the others in that he feels absolutely no loyalty to party at this point and believes that he may well be able to win re-election as a Republican if need be. "This will kill the Democratic Party" is a feature of voting against cloture to him, not a bug.
Reid's conversation with Lieberman goes a lot deeper than the other ones. Here is "Harry's Soliloquy":
"I've stood by you, Joe. I've taken endless amounts of crap for it. I may lose my own re-election because of it, because Nevada's activists are so pissed off at me. There's only one thing I can do to regain their support and get re-elected myself, if this bill doesn't pass -- and that is, destroy you. I have to destroy you so completely, so utterly, that they are cheering every bloody blow I land on you even when you're down on the mat. I'm not going to enjoy it -- it's just a show for their benefit -- but I am going to throw my all into it. You have to understand that.
"You also have to understand that no one is going to protect you. They're already going after Lindsay Graham. They're going after John McCain. They will not accept you.
"Here's what I will have to do if you vote against cloture. You will be expelled from the caucus. You will lose your Committee Chair. I'll let Susan Collins chair the Committee before I let you do it, if I have to, just to make sure I can get Republican votes for the revision. What's more, I will bring this bill up again, late in the session, close to the election, and I will have us vote on it again, dramatically, so that you're in the spotlight as the betrayer again, after we've spent the summer ripping you apart and making you a pariah. And by that time maybe things will be so much worse for Republicans that Snowe will have switched, or Voinovich will have had it, or Charlie Crist will have lost his primary in Florida and we can get LeMieux's vote. And if that happens, you'll have sacrificed your career and your reputation for nothing.
"And you should also know that I'm talking to Snowe today also, Joe. If you don't give me what I want, maybe I can cut a deal with her -- and then your train has left the station.
"On the other hand, if you do play along: well, I have two words for you, Joe: 'Mary Landrieu.'
"So what's it going to be, Joe? Do we have your vote?"
If Joe agrees, the conference bill is (largely) as we wish, and we pass our bill, after a 60-40 cloture vote. (Of course, Reid will also be talking to Olympia Snowe, telling her that if she blocks reform, she cuts off her later chance to switch parties.)
If Joe doesn't agree, Reid either tells the conferees to send him a good bill anyway and call his bluff, or he tells them to compromise. He's less likely to do the latter if he thinks his head is on the chopping block in Nevada. And here's the cool thing: none of us here know if his head is on the chopping block. We can't threaten retaliation here so much as predict doom. Reid may do what we want him to do -- purely for his own purposes. Works for me!
EPILOGUE
As with the impeachment of Andrew Johnson, we may not know how the drama unfolds until the end, after they have been presented with their Hobson's Choice. It will be fascinating. (And then we'll be on to something else, and even if we pass this bill we'll have to revisit it soon.)
What this discussion leaves open is what our role in this drama should be. I think I offer two takeaways in this diary. One will upset those who demand a public option to accept, one will upset those who want to ensure that a bill of some sort ultimately passes.
The admonition to my fellow proponents of a public option is this: don't freak out too much when Reid betrays us at the end of Act III. Without our obtaining at least one more vote, it has to happen. We should be angry at those who block the vote, but we shouldn't hate Democrats in general (or Reid in particular) over it. Time spent now discussing whether Reid is a weak leader is time wasted; that time will come later. The things to bear in mind are that (1) we'll work around the obstacles and (2) the important thing is to ensure that the conferees come up with as good a bill as they can. We achieve the latter goal by yelling as loudly and frantically as possible so as to put the fear into Reid, Nelson, Lincoln, Lieberman, and the conferees.
Now some of you, who want to make sure that we pass some bill, are freaking out at that. I feel your pain. You assume that by saying that anything short of a public option is unacceptable, we risk toppling the entire structure of health care reform simply because we don't get our way. This next part is for you.
I want you to consider that maybe we're lying too. I want you to consider further that maybe we're lying to ourselves about what we'll do -- in which case no amount of argument and abuse aimed at us will help. (Have none of you made or faced a massive but empty threat, later to be forgotten?)
I want you to bear in mind that the history of the netroots includes not only taking strong positions, but having a short attention span and a short memory. (Come on: how many times have we consigned Nancy Pelosi permanently to the fiery pits of hell, and now most of us like her again?)
That is: what you're worried about is that, when push comes to shove, the people writing and reading here will truly demand "all or nothing at all" and prefer political death to dishonor. I worry about that too in a lot of areas, though not necessarily this one. And I want you to reflect for a moment about how silly it is to dwell on that worry right now.
First, most of the people here will not be in a position to make such critical decisions when the time comes. We won't have the information that insiders do, we won't have the pressure put upon us, we won't have the responsibility. We're not the actors up on the stage! We're in the chorus -- at best!
We can blow off as much steam as we want -- and it doesn't matter much. It shouldn't matter much to you either.
What we are, though, is a signal to our political leaders of trouble out there in the electorate. Do you doubt it? Read Steve Singiser's report from Friday -- as close to a must-read piece of writing as you'll ever find here -- on the Enthusiasm Gap leading up to 2010.
We're not really threatening about what we'll do. We're threatening about what others will do. And the threat that the broad populace won't have our back in 2010 is very real -- and not due to complaints on DKos!
So don't worry. There is a kernel of truth -- at least -- in our criticisms of weakness on health care. Our leaders are highly unlikely to overreact to our caterwauling; they'll likely underreact, and the question is simply by how much. But the complaints you see here are calling attention to what you see in that poll -- and bear in mind how much a truly historic Democratic victory will crush Republican spirits. (Money wagered right now on Republican victory in 2010 factor in a good likelihood of "Democrats either fail or crumple on health care reform.")
So, please, remember that your fellow Kosters who are screaming for health care reform are also actors, trying to influence the people who are actually on stage (and behind the scenes running the play), with an eye towards how they are being received. You don't need to tell people here not to sit on their hands when the chips are truly down. Most people here won't do so. We're not the problem -- but we know many lower-information voters who are.
So, if you will, put on your costumes and join the chorus. "We need real reform" is our line in the play, to be repeatedly loudly and often. When others add "or else!," you don't have to argue the point, which is not being made for your benefit. There will be plenty of time to argue the point as the election nears, and I promise that win or lose on health care reform I will be on your side (because my big issue is the federal judiciary and I know what that implies.) You can say to your hotheaded friends (and your only apparently hotheaded friends like me) that while you disagree about what we'll do if real health care reform doesn't pass, we're pretty much all on the same side in making sure that we pass something as good as possible.
That's your role in our role: making sure that the final betrayal in this drama works to our benefit.