Hunter brings the shrill:

Thank goodness we’ve kept our powder dry, that’s all I’ve got to say. Thank goodness we didn’t make a big deal over warrantless wiretapping, corporate immunity, the politicization of the Department of Justice, the Blackwater murders, torture, extraordinary rendition, fraudulent rewriting of scientific reports, or blanket false public statements in an effort to sell the nation on a ruinous war — all so we could store up enough political capital for this moment. Thank goodness we didn’t sully ourselves with indictments or investigations; thank goodness we’ve kept the camaraderie of the Senate intact and not flown off, willy-nilly, and gotten angry with Senators who claim we are instituting “Death Panels” to weed out veterans and the elderly, or pushed too hard when members of the past administration flatly denied the ability of the Congress to so much as require their presence for questioning. Thank goodness we have not pressed to hard on whether Abu Ghraib abuses resulted from explicit direction of the highest figures in the Department of Defense, and that when we found out the waterboarding of a prisoner in order to come up with supposed “links” between Iraq and Al Qaeda was suggested specifically by the office of the Vice President, we knew well enough to let bygones be bygones, because we knew we would not want to expend our political capital on such trivial matters, when we were about to take on one of the most urgent domestic issues facing the nation.

Now, if we play our cards right, and with the help of our 60-seat Senate majority, we can boldly reinvigorate the collapsed American healthcare system by passing a “reform” bill that mandates everyone in America purchase underregulated products of record-profitable insurance companies that have proven unable to provide basic services to millions of Americans or even perform competent administration of their own products, but which provides only token efforts at reining in the worst of the worst abuses of the public by those companies. We need not provide any measure of “socialized” insurance, as most of the rest of the civilized world does. And we need not particularly worry about the poor and uninsured, because this is a recession, and it wouldn’t be cost effective.

I think we should count ourselves lucky that the Democrats have sat motionless with their thumbs up their asses for the last decade in order to steadfastly prepare themselves for this day.

As Hunter goes on to point out, there is still value in Democrats keeping the powder dry even longer. Obama’s political capital, after all, could be used by another incredibly important (but yet to be decided) issue down the line. Granted, it won’t be comprehensive immigration reform, ending the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq, putting through public financing for all federal elections or  universal access to high-speed internet connections…but it will certainly be big.

It’s situations like this one that make me profoundly question my long term commitment to staying in politics. If we can’t get our party to act with conviction in a fight like healthcare, what  can we ever expect them to do correctly?

Over at Open Left, Chris Bowers lays out the system through which progressive Democrats in Congress are being squeezed by Democratic elites out of support for the public option in healthcare reform. Bowers’ understanding of the forces at play is about as comprehensive as any written analysis of legislative wrangling I’ve seen on this issue. Sadly, the path we are headed on doesn’t seem to favor the progressive block holding together and thus the public option and a high-quality piece of reform legislation does not seem very likely.

I was at Netroots Nation this past week (hence the lack of posting). On Thursday night President Bill Clinton spoke to the gathering. One of his strongest points was that change takes time; he views progress in government policies and legislation as the work of decades and does not think using political power to expedite the process or help more people sooner is advisable. As such, he advocated that the progressive online community stop criticizing Obama and Democrats for their work on healthcare reform, even if it ends up not being exactly what we’d like to see. Clinton urged the outright celebration of anything being passed, regardless of its content. This sort of attitude, Clinton proposed, would enable Obama to retain political strength and help Democrats electorally, thereby ensuring the continued opportunity to achieve more meaningful reform.

I’ve had many conversations with political friends – operatives, activists, and bloggers – that have included defenses of doing something regardless of its quality. The argument often goes, “Well what if we can’t get the public option or strong affordability or employer responsibility, but we can get a piece of legislation that will cover 15 or 20 million more Americans than today. Can we not help those people because the bill wasn’t what we really wanted?” This is, at best, an only marginally persuasive argument. The reason we may not be able to do more is a political one – we lack the votes to achieve everything liberal Democrats want to achieve. And passing reform now is likely to preclude us from pursuing healthcare reform again in the Obama administration. After all, he is going to take anything that passes, call it “landmark reform” and not touch the issue again — how could he after running for reelection on his “landmark reform” of healthcare? Thus, further reform of healthcare will be forestalled for at least another eight years when we can only hope the political climate will be better suited for liberal reforms.

What happens next in this fight is going to be a question of what the President and leaders of the Democratic Party believe. Are they willing to lead now to get the best possible reform today and not delay meaningful change for decades? Or will the President’s support for the public option, which has really become a stand-in for real progressive reform and not a solitary issue, be translated into fighting for it, as David Sirota asks on Twitter? These are questions that connect the political landscape to policy beliefs about what is best for the country. At a certain level, Obama must answer Clinton’s challenge. Will he lead to make sure change happens now, or will he pass the buck to future presidents and hope that the situation becomes so dire that the bunk Sarah Palin and Chuck Grassley spit out about death panels has no effect on the media nor the public.

Maybe reform will be easier in another fifteen or twenty years. Maybe there will be something marginally better than our current system, which may add some percentage of the uninsured to the rolls of the insured. But whatever reform comes out is almost certainly going to be a huge boon to the bottom lines of the health insurance industry, thereby making change down the line even less likely. Leadership may be hard, but the cost of not pursuing the most aggressive path for reform now is even more frightening. Hopefully complacency will not win out and what is possible is redefined through leadership, as opposed to being determinative of where leadership dare not go.

Mike Lux at Open Left writes:

Look, this should be obvious, but apparently it’s not: when some big piece of our economy is really messed up, but some major corporate interest is making lots and lots of money off the system, if that corporate interest doesn’t object to the “reform” being proposed, whatever legislation being proposed will not solve the actual problem. The 98-0 votes that folks like David Broder love and extol, the bipartisan bill signing ceremonies that thrill the hell out of everyone in DC – they don’t actually solve or resolve anything important.

If Democrats take the easy path, and get that big bipartisan love fest on the White House lawn, health care will still be messed up in all the ways it’s messed up now: health care costs (and the federal budget deficit) will still be spiraling up and up, the number of uninsured will keep going up as well, people who lose their jobs or have pre-existing conditions will still be priced out of the ability to get insurance. And instead of congratulating us for our great bipartisan compromise, voters will be pissed. President Obama and Congressional Democrats need to grit their teeth and stick to the business of comprehensive reform. It will make the insurance companies, and the Republicans, really mad. But failing to actually solve the problem AGAIN is a train wreck. Stick with it, folks, put your noses to the grindstone, and do what needs to be done.

It does need to be said. Now, it isn’t a surprise to anyone who is paying attention to the degree that, say, liberal bloggers are paying attention. But there is a clear inability for Democrats in Washington and insider organizations to see the forest from the trees here. At some point, this thing either needs to have teeth or it needs to be put on hold until the votes are there to pass something with teeth. In effect, what Lux is saying is a direct rebuttal to the Baucus strategy to get a bipartisan bill (supported in strong terms by President Obama). As Matt Yglesias notes, Baucus is uniquely responsible for deflating progressive passion for healthcare reform.

Lux’s point brings me back to something that I have often felt and said regarding Democratic politics in Washington. This is a situation where there are two possible explanations for the pursuit of a bipartisan resolution that makes everyone happy. The first, which seems to be what Lux is implying, is that some people in DC just haven’t noticed that this path won’t produce meaningful change and as a result, Democrats may well be punished for not getting the job done on healthcare reform. The second, which I think is the correct explanation, is that many Democrats simply do not believe that a failure to dramatically change the realities in healthcare insurance and delivery in America with new legislation would not be a legislative failure. They have a vested interest in the continued prosperity of the health insurance industry, the pharmaceutical industry, and the private hospital industry (among others). As such, they don’t seek to help everyone if it comes at the expense of their donor base.

Sadly, the outcome of healthcare reform legislation seems to be controlled to a greater degree by the empowered conservative Democratic minority in the Senate and House, under the guidance of Max Baucus, Mike Ross, and with peripheral messaging support from a President who mistakenly continues to embrace the goal of bipartisanship over efficacy in healthcare legislation.

Paul Krugman offers one of the best analyses of how the Blue Dogs operate and how incoherent their objections to healthcare reform are.  It’s rare that politicians policy statements, especially conservative ones, are evaluated next to each other. The words “fiscal responsibility” are adeptly wielded by Blue Dogs and, generally speaking, the press allows them cover behind them. But Krugman doesn’t.

Well, they talk a lot about fiscal responsibility, which basically boils down to worrying about the cost of those subsidies. And it’s tempting to stop right there, and cry foul. After all, where were those concerns about fiscal responsibility back in 2001, when most conservative Democrats voted enthusiastically for that year’s big Bush tax cut — a tax cut that added $1.35 trillion to the deficit?

But it’s actually much worse than that — because even as they complain about the plan’s cost, the Blue Dogs are making demands that would greatly increase that cost.

There’s much more beyond that, but you get the idea. It’s a truth-telling session. Hopefully many officials in the administration, Senate leadership, and the House read Krugman’s piece and see the need to pressure Blue Dogs to stay with the party line.

More importantly, hopefully other journalists see Krugman’s column and begin to question Blue Dogs who cry fiscal responsibility while pushing for policy measures that will make healthcare reform legislation substantially more expensive. Right now the debate is being dominated by people who aren’t making any sense. And yet they’re holding the House Energy and Commerce Committee hostage, while the Finance Committee in the Senate continues to stall. Together, incoherent conservative Democratic legislator are stopping reform and killing momementum for change.

It’s not as if these legislators aren’t hearing from their constituents that they should support meaningful reform, including a public option. MoveOn, Healthcare for Amerian Now, SEIU, and Organizing for America, among others, have been driving hundreds of thousands of legislative contacts in support of reform. But as Krugman points out, these Blue Dogs are more loyal to their corporate donors and caucus self-interest than their constituents.

Another sure way for the Blue Dogs to lose their influence in this process is if the Progressive Caucus came together to make themselves a comparable obstacle to any legislation that isn’t suitably aggressive in driving reform. Given a counterweight, the Blue Dogs would no longer control the narrative nor the legislative process. This requires a stronger push from progressives to define their lines in the sand…and for a simultaneous effort to let leadership know that they have to make a choice between defending Blue Dogs while getting no meaningful change and defending progressives while achieving landmark reform. The choice shouldn’t be hard, but you never know with today’s Democrats.