Health Wars (10/27/09)

It's been said, many times, many ways: What goes around, comes around:

“We’re trying to do too much at once,” Lieberman said. “To put this government-created insurance company on top of everything else is just asking for trouble for the taxpayers, for the premium payers and for the national debt. I don’t think we need it now.”…

Lieberman did say he’s “strongly inclined” to vote to proceed to the debate, but that he’ll ultimately vote to block a floor vote on the bill if it isn’t changed first…

“I can’t see a way in which I could vote for cloture on any bill that contained a creation of a government-operated-run insurance company,” Lieberman added. “It’s just asking for trouble – in the end, the taxpayers are going to pay and probably all people will have health insurance are going to see their premiums go up because there’s going to be cost shifting as there has been for Medicare and Medicaid.”

Ya think there might be at least a few hard-lefties who might be rethinking their enraged drive to bulldoze Liebs out of the Democrat Party over his Scoop Jacksonism on Iraq three years ago?  Me neither.  For any of those animals to rethink anything would require even the tiniest chink in their armor of supreme arrogance.  You'd sooner get Rosie O'Donnell to a prayer breakfast and get her to stick to ricecakes.

But the point still holds.  You just knew when Connecticut Donks nominated Ned Lamont instead in 2006 that sooner or later there'd be a reckoning for that excommunication.  Many thought it would take the form of Joementum switching parties to hand control of the Senate back to the GOP in the last Congress.  I was never one of that many because we'd harbored similar anticipations back in 2001-02 and it never materialized.  He had many chances to make the jump but never did, citing his lifelong status as a Democrat.  Leaving aside the far from unmixed blessing that his presence in the Republican caucus would have been, you couldn't not respect that loyalty.  Which made his party's betrayal of him (including his fellow Senate Dems) all the more astonishing.

Now the piper is calling in the chits on the unholy grail, the unrequited malevolent dream of American Marxism when the latter are so close to climax they can taste it.  Who's sorry now, assholes?

Remember the fourteenth Finance Committee vote for BaucusBarryCare?  She's out.  Which may stiffen Ben Nelson and Mary Landreiu and Evan Bayh and Blanche Lincoln (the latter two facing re-election in "red" states next year).  Dirty Harry would be a vote short of cloture without those four; if the house of cards collapses (again), he's got another debacle on the non-negotiable shiboleth of the Donk faction that holds what's left of his political vitality in its cloven hooves.  Yes, they held Reid hostage to the public option, with or without triggers and opt-outs, despite it being a political cyanide capsule, but they'll never shoulder the blame for their own self-defeating zealotry.  And yes, they can (as Reid doubtless hopes) scapegoat Lieberman, but that would get them dangerously close to acknowledging their extremist idiocy in giving him ample reason to shaft them when and where it would hurt the most.  Either way, Barney Fife's Evil Twin is political dog-meat next year anyway.

So what does Dirty Harry do?  Strip the P.O. back out again?  It'd be the final straw for the hardcore libs.  It's not like there aren't two or three or four other divisive poison pills elbowing in all directions that are bleeding the healthcare putsch white.

And guess what?  Contrary to the Pelosi party line, the "competitively consumer option" ain't in any better shape in the (ahem) lower chamber:

Clyburn told the assembled members at the meeting that the leadership does not have the votes to pass the robust public option, according to a House progressive familiar with the meeting. That sparked aggressive pushback from liberals, who argued that leadership — and the White House — should be working harder to win over the remaining votes the bill needs.

The document shows that forty-seven House Dems are committed No votes, and eight are Leaning No, for a total of fifty-six. That means of 256 House Dems, only 200 remain, and a dozen of those are listed as undecided. The bill needs 218 votes for passage.

House progressives argue that the document should light a fire under Dem leaders. One House progressive tells me he’s convinced that most of the undecideds, and a number of the No votes, can be won over with the right mix of pressure and incentives — which only the House leadership and the White House can provide.

Two problems with that, Skeeziks: Your House leadership has the collective mental wattage of a bipolar Forrest Gump convention, and the ObamaHouse's "judgment to lead" was to outsource the whole kit & kaboodle to....your House leadership in the first place.  And in case you missed the memo, His Majesty and The Glorious Teleprompter are in transit to the political discount rack via an endless string of posh country clubs.  At this point the only games he's changing are for the other side, of which next Tuesday will be but the downpayment.

With no public option in the House version, what would be left to lift the bar on the Senate side, assuming Reid could ever untie this gordian knot?  As endgame descriptions go, "The bill collapses of its own weight on the Senate floor" is positively gentle.