Obama's post-partisan dream

So here's how I see the political equation around health care today:

1. Democrats control the White House and both legislative chambers.
2. Voters correctly conclude that this makes the party accountable for federal policy and governance.
3. Despite counting 60 senators in their caucus, the Democrats don't have 60 votes for everything the president sends their way.
4. This means there will have to be compromise within the party to get a health-care reform package out of the Senate.
5. While I'm sure there are plenty of sane Republicans out there who oppose Obama's half-measure health-care reform on pure conservative principle, the party's public campaign against the package isn't even about health care. It's about playing up dark fantasies of murderous socialist oppression being unleashed against white conservative Christian people by the shadowy armies of some terrible communist/Satanist/Nazi/minority/hippie/gay/French conspiracy.
6. Consequently, the goal of achieving traditional bipartatisanship on this health-care package is really just kind of a nice thought. As Paul Krugman said, these people can't be appeased.

So what do you do if you're the Democrats?

Well, the first thing you have to do is what they've been doing: make sure that you're in dialog with any Republican senators who are willing to act in good faith as grown-up partners in running the federal government. The best Democratic win on health care is one that preserves their core values and demonstrates a willingness to be inclusive. You'd think that would be easy, but it isn't.

Their next-best win is the more likely one. You recognize, as a party, that you've got to deliver the best package that you can get WITH ONLY DEMOCRATIC VOTES. And the tricky part here is, if you can't count on any crossovers, you're really giving an inordinate amount of clout to the conservatives in your own party.

That's a pretty standard negotiation. You work from the ends to the sticking points of each side, and then you twist arms and call in favors and dig up dirt and posture and do all the things that people do when they know they need to make a deal and their bottom-line positions aren't yet in accordance. Then you get something done and everyone declares victory. 

Except for the GOP. By opting out of the constructive process, Republicans will be gambling everything on life getting worse in America by November 2010.

POST-PARTISANISM

As others have noted before, there's something weird about Obama's repeated insistence on reaching out to Republicans who recoil from his touch. It doesn't scan as savvy.

But here's why I think it matters. Obama's subtext mandate in 2008 was a promise to improve the way Washington works. Politicos and journalists don't believe that to be a "real" promise, but Obama seems to take the mission seriously. I suspect many of his supporters do, too. 

The problem most of us have is that when we imagine "post-partisan," all we can really come up with is a more civil form of bi-partisanship. There's nothing transformative about that idea, and there's nothing about cooperation on individual votes that changes the basic geometry of America's political infrastructure. 

But perhaps fundamentally realigning American democracy into a healthier "post-partisan" system will require an interim step, and perhaps we're already witnessing it. If the GOP keeps pandering to its paranoid fringe, all the people of good faith (or even relatively good faith) within the GOP will have to move into the Democratic Party in order to have an effective voice.

Arlen Specter isn't a Democrat. He's just a serious adult who was left in the cold by a Republican Party that has decided to commit suicide rather than adapt its conservative principles to a complex, changing world. The GOP, which once boasted giants like Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt and Ike Eisenhower is now the party of Birthers and Deathers and Glenn Beck. It's the party of people who don't want evolution taught in public schools, and here's the thing: It's pretty obvious that Americans who can't cope emotionally with basic principles of 19th century science aren't thriving in the new information economy. If I learned anything on Nov. 4, it's that young voters have noticed this, and they really don't want to hang around with those overwrought windbags.

So here's what seems likely to me, and when I'm wrong about some or all of it, you're free to remind me in comments later. I'm no fortune teller (I said Michael Vick would sign with the Rams -- D'OH!). I'm just trying to think through some ideas in public.

1. Obama will get some degree of health care reform passed this fall.
2. I have no idea what it will look like.
3. Because the current system is such a train wreck, whatever half-measures the Democrats pass will be better than what we have now.
4. The reform bill will pass without Republican support, and possibly without a single Republican vote in either the House or Senate.
5. Republicans will continue to gear their public message toward gains in the 2010 mid-terms, essentially ceding every success to the Democrats and banking their party's future on a weak economy and public backlash against "Obamacare."

One question? What if Americans wind up kinda liking it? What if, after this extended GOP freak-out about "Death Panels" and socialism, the reality of health-care reform turns out to be less anxiety, greater access and lower costs? If the GOP turns the mid-terms into a referendum on Obama-ism and voters say they kinda like it, what does that portend for the Republican Party?

In other words, what if the GOP's dysfunctional political thinking is creating Obama's post-partisan America by removing the party as a reasonable alternative? Until serious conservatives find a way to confront the wingnut right effectively, the Republican Party will struggle as a meaningful participant in American democracy.

Would that be a permanent situation? Are we on the verge of becoming a one-party state? Of course not. But it does mean a period in which all the constructive participants in government could be united by nominal party affiliation, if not ideology. That could be good for the country, if only because the isolation of the fringe right could allow the breaking of The Republican Noise Machine and the beginning of a better cycle in American politics. 

Such a period would likely be short lived, and no doubt many sensible conservatives would remain in the GOP out of loyalty, giving the party a foundation for its rebirth under TBD leadership. But wouldn't it be nice if the post-partisan re-imagining of Washington that Obama promised on the stump turned out to be his greatest legacy?

(Disclosure: I want socialized medicine, and I want it so badly I don't even mind using the poisoned term for it. Letting corporations run health care as a for-profit business is, IMHO, absurdly misguided. I enjoyed the government-run health care I got from the Army, and I have no doubt that our free enterprise culture will provide additional coverage and boutique care for anyone who wants and can afford it.)

Comments

[Chuck Boyd]

Hey Dan, as a relative "newbie" on Medicare (5 years), I have no complaints. It does what it does and I have been well treated.

That's my experience - so far - with "socialized" medical care.

[Jason Butler]

When I imagine "post-partisan," I'm really dreaming for "grown-up."

[JanetLee]

As one who sees daily how the system works - the wealthy who can pay the bills themselves get what they want, the poor who have the "socialist" government paid care pretty much get what they need (when they have physical access which is a different animal all together).

Those of us in the middle with private insurance usually get told what we can and can't have done or what order of interventions the doctor must use are the ones who are not getting good care.

Example: My elbow hurt real bad. My doc wanted to send me to an ortho doc and get a cortisone shot. Easy, cheezy. Not so fast says my (very excellent, actually, in comparison) insurance company. I am not *allowed* to do that. I must go to get an elbow brace, then I must go to physical therapy for x-amount of visits, then and only then could I have the treatment my doctor wanted in the first place - which was the one that worked (four years and holding).

I see benefits for a public option everyday. People without insurance wait until they are so sick, they think they are going to die, then go to the ER. If they had been able to see a doc, a simple treatment could have solved the problem, but now we (the taxpayers) are paying a huge bill for emergency care, instead of a small bill for a doctor's visit.

An acquaintance has a adult son with some pretty serious mental health issues. He is college educated but can't hold a job because he can't get insured so he can't get his medications reliably, and when he can't get his meds reliably, he can't hold a job. It is a horrible cycle that is making a citizen who otherwise would be self-reliant (and tax paying!) into a dependent.

A friend has a daughter born with a serious kidney disorder. She almost died before she could get a kidney transplant at age two. The medical care was so complex that my friend's husband had to quit his job to care for the child while my friend continued to work because she had the insurance. When the private insurance capped out, they got Medicaid due to her condition. When she got older and more stable, the husband returned to work because "it was the right thing to do", he waited the six months for the pre-existing condition clause to expire. Now Medicaid and the new private insurance just refuse to pay, each saying the other is responsible. The uncollected bills are turned over to a bill collector and this family, who just wanted to do the right thing and take care of their child, have had their credit ruined. There have been months where the pharmacy has had to refuse to fill the $1000's a month anti-rejection drug prescription, forcing them to ask, do we pay the bills and eat or do we let our daughter die?

And I know what end of life counseling and hospice are - they are awesome things - do not come back with the evil lie that that little girl would have been put before some "death panel". If you actually believe that, you have no place in this debate. If you say it because you like to be afraid or try to make other feel afraid, then go do some soul searching, because you are not fully human any more.

Sorry for the rant, Dan.

[Dan]

It was beautiful. Thank you.

[xarkGirl]

This is a fantastic, thoughtful response, JanetLee. The opposition to reform is an 'emotional freakout" not rooted in anything close to practicality or truth. I think that every senator or rep who refuses to act like an adult on this should voluntarily give up their COngressional health benefits.

[Joey]

As the father of a son with cystic fibrosis health care reform is more than an academic debate.
At six weeks old the doctors kicked me in the stomach when they gave me the news that I would one day have to bury my son. A little more than a week later I was kicked in the teeth when the pharmacy wanted $3000 to pay for the meds for me to take my baby home.
I have a job. By comparison, I have pretty good insurance. My employer pays thousands of dollars for "their portion" of my coverage. I have looked for jobs and been offered several. All of them for more take-home pay than what I have now.
I had to refuse each one. Why? Because they didn't offer insurance or offered a plan that would negate any additional money I would make.
After housing, the largest expense we have is medical. Oh, did I mention I had a brain tumor?
Next week my youngest son turns three. By Christmas this year we will have paid off the bill from his birth.
"Costs spiral" out of control. The argument that reform or a "public option" would reduce choice is flat out laughable.
How many decisions are taken out of a doctor's hands now by a bean-counter?
All that still leaves the moral obligation unanswered. We are fond of referring to ourselves as the "richest" nation on Earth.
What does it say about us if we can not provide for the least of our brethren?

[Dan]

Here's more evidence that the White House is doing the math and increasing the pressure on conservatives (in both parties) to get serious about compromise.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/08/19/health.care/

I would rather not see reconciliation (a simple-majority rule) used to pass this bill in the Senate, but signaling a willingness to use it is a big stick if you're trying to force negotiations.

Wikipedia has a concise explanation of reconciliation, and there's an interesting account of its application in 1996 here.

I didn't remember this, but Democrats wanted to use reconciliation to pass the Clinton-era health-care reform package, but were thwarted by Sen. Robert Byrd, D-WVa.

A GOP freakout on reconciliation might be a legitimate complaint, but since they're already entering the Chicken Little Zone with their "Death Panel" claims, a better question becomes: Who would take them seriously?

Particularly after Sentate GOP leadership tried to push the Nuclear Option over judicial appointments in 2005. Plus it was a GOP-led Senate in 1996 that invoked reconciliation in an effort to confront President Clinton, followed by GOP reconciliation votes during the GWB administration that ignored the Byrd Rule to pass the Bush tax cuts.

Gonna be kinda hard for Republicans to make the case that the Democrats would be crossing the line with this when they've been all over that line for years.

[Dan]

Comment didn't take my hypertext link, so here's the link to "The Day the Senate Died," which describes the GOP's decision to expand reconciliation to defeat the power of the Democratic minority.

http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getpage.cgi?position=all&page=S6135&dbname=1996_record

[Joe]

Dan I don't agree with everything you said but it does give me a differant perspective to think about.