The Senate today passed health care reform legislation by a 60-39 vote. It’s a historic achievement, the farthest health care reform has ever come. Progressives should cheer today’s news.
Yet because the legislative sausage-making occurred under the bright lights of the 24-hour news cycle and incessant blogorrhea, the sense of achievement is tempered by disillusionment — even disgust — with a political system that seems designed to chip away at bold reform. Horse-trading and bickering are hallmarks of the legislative process, but we experienced something different with this bill: because of its momentousness, and because of the media ecosystem, more Americans than ever saw more of the process than ever. And what they saw was a politics that seems horribly ill-suited to solving the public problems that face us today.
Even President Obama, who has shown remarkable faith in messy pluralism throughout the entire ordeal, indicated his frustration with the system, telling PBS:
I mean, if you look historically back in the ’50s, the ’60s, the ’70s, the ’80s – even when there was sharp political disagreements, when the Democrats were in control for example and Ronald Reagan was president – you didn’t see even routine items subject to the 60-vote rule.
So I think that if this pattern continues, you’re going to see an inability on the part of America to deal with big problems in a very competitive world, and other countries are going to start running circles around us. We’re going to have to return to some sense that governance is more important than politics inside the Senate. We’re not there right now.
Meanwhile, that up-close view of lawmaking no doubt contributed to the backlash that has emerged in the netroots over the bill. Dissent was not unexpected, but mutiny? That’s what the president faces on the left. On Firedoglake, one the left’s leading blogs, Jon Walker called the bill’s passage “a loss for the country.” Jane Hamsher accused President Obama of throwing progressives under the bus, calling his deal-making “the move of a deeply cynical politician who believes in nothing but shameless manipulation for political convenience.”
The netroots’ disdain for the president seems at odds with the messianic powers they ascribe to him. Apparently, all the president need do is give a speech or sweet-talk a legislator or two and he can get the left whatever it wants. You make laws, however, with the system you have, not the one you wish you had. Navigate the process — the only one we have — is what the president did. The wonder is that this legislation passed at all. Facing a fractious Democratic caucus, a phalanx of industry stakeholders, and — the biggest factor of them all — a Republican Party that has placed its bet on sinking this presidency, the president is close to notching, in the words of The New Republic‘s Jonathan Chait, “the most significant American legislative triumph in at least four decades.”
It’s not over yet. Anguished negotiations in conference will follow. Continued pressure from Republicans and interest groups, the conservative base and progressive blogs, will try to erode the resolve of congressional Democrats. The Republicans in Congress are a hopeless cause — a fact that, more than any other political consideration, should dominate progressive thinking about tactics and strategy. Seek to improve the bill in conference by all means. But attacking the bill with talking points that could easily come from Republicans (A “deeply cynical politician”? Really?) does the progressive cause no good.
Last year’s campaign showed Obama to be a really good closer. An even bigger test now awaits.