I may be the only person following the debate over health care who is shocked at the attention Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) is getting for voting for the Senate Finance Committee health care bill - but yes, as my new newspaper column explains, I am surprised, and for what should be obvious reasons.
First of all, Snowe's vote in support of the bill wasn't mathematically necessary - the bill would have passed with or without her vote for it. That's just an empirical fact; as is the fact that Democrats have 60 votes themselves to overcome a filibuster with or without Snowe; as is the fact that Democrats have the 51 votes necessary to pass health care reform with reconciliation, again with or without Snowe. So the idea that her vote was/is pivotal is a fantasy created by a Beltway media always trying to manufacture drama - and often stretching to manufacture that drama in a city populated by old, boring, ultra-parsing sycophants and lobotomy cases.
Second, and more important, the idea that Snowe's support is important because it will allow the final bill to be called "bipartisan" - and the idea that that billing will politically protect Democrats - is absurd on its face. How do we know this? Because Democrats taught us that via the Iraq War.
Recall that a huge chunk of Democratic legislators voted to support the Iraq War. Indeed, the Iraq resolution was far more "bipartisan" than the health care bill can ever hope to be in this Congress. And yet, Democrats turned right around and used the Iraq War to criticize Republicans and the Bush administration - and quite effectively, if the 2006 and 2008 elections were any indication. I'm not saying I was 100% happy with that - I would have liked the Democrats to oppose the war from the get-go, but I am saying it's a pretty clear fact that even though Democrats supported the Iraq War, it didn't prevent them from attacking the Republicans/Bush on the issue.
Thus, the idea that one Republican vote from Maine will politically insulate Democrats from GOP attacks on health care doesn't make any sense. The only thing that will ultimately protect Democrats from those inevitable GOP political attacks will be a health care bill that actually delivers real results.
Read the whole column here.
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Roger Hickey: The House Will Make Sure the Senate Includes a Robust Public Option
Suddenly, all Democratic politicians, even the most conservative, are realizing that their voters will blame them, not the health insurance companies, if the policies the voters are required to buy are too expensive.
To Snowe's credit, she didn't seem particularly interested in posing for the cameras. The RNC made her a 'star' by forcing everyone but her to tow the party line. She got notices because she was the only one not grovelling.
Those who know their history know that if Thalmann had extended a bi-partisan hand to von Papen, the world would be a much difference place today, I suppose.
'moderate' Democrats (perhaps half of the sixty, they say) of their place,
and she gives her colleague Susan Collins license to move rightward.
Aye. Therein lies the rub.
What a joke.
This country is finished, it is niether a democracy nor a republic anymore, god alone knows what it is.
SO the headline and the sound bites after the bill leaves the finance committee is NOT this: NO REPUBS support health care bill. The headline instead is: health care bill leaves committee with Republican support. Yes, it's just one vote, but most people don't care and they don't put the two together, i.e, only one Repub vote and her vote wasn't needed.
Most people don't even understand how a bill comes into law. So, now, here's the headline and the sound bite: We are closer than we've ever been to real health care reform. It's all about perception and politics.
Quit looking at things from the perspective of someone in the know. It's politics and perception that really matters in any issue. Why else would poor white people, continue to vote for a party that supports big business over working people? A party that doesn't support their interests?
They don't need Snowe for passage. They want Snowe for cover.
J
Democrats have made Snowe a power because they don't have their own act together. The Democrats have marginalized themselves. Millions were spent and hundreds of thousands of man hours were expended to get Democrats to a filibuster-proof majority of 60. That is what the Democrat leaders in the Senate said they needed. We gave it to them.
Now, they don't know how to handle it. They have been trapped by their own rhetoric in obtaining their super-majority, and have been exposed for the leaderless, waffling, mealy-mouthed politics. It is shameful.
We can pass any bill we want in the Senate with 51 votes using a parliamentary procedure called Reconciliation.
So Lieberman and the eight worst Democrats in the Senate can vote against the bill and it still passes.
Snowe is completely irrelevant, and Sirota's post is spot on.