| There has been no precedent for what we've done in healthcare. When I started talking to activists and journalists many months ago about progressives holding strong for a public option, I was pooh-poohed because it had never happened before. Frankly, the Congressional Progressive Caucus had never whipped before. There was also no precedent for progressives outside of Congress directly allying with the Congressional Progressive Caucus on the inside.
The groundwork we have laid in employing the progressive block strategy has been extremely promising. But we're certainly not out of the woods. We failed to get Medicare+5% as the reimbursement schedule for the public option, and we're extremely endangered moving forward.
There are three basic scenarios from here:
(1) When this is over, having succeeded in getting a more progressive piece of legislation than we would have gotten otherwise, progressives inside and outside of Congress declare and embrace our win, learn from our lessons, and figure out how to be better and more effective in the next fight.
(2) Progressives inside of Congress fail us:
* by backsliding completely so that the legislation we get is not more progressive than the default;
* by taking their ball and going home when they don't get everything they want and thereby undermining their bargaining clout with leadership; or
* by publicly undermining their own credibility.
(3) Progressives outside of Congress fail us:
* by tiring of the battle so that we don't provide the inside progressives the help they need in these last weeks;
* by deciding to attack inside progressives as failures and sell-outs, undermining them and destroying the alliance we've built with the only allies we're likely to have for making policy; or
* by publicly undermining our own credibility.
Now we don't have to get everything 100% right. The fact that McGovern was quoted as saying something less-than-helpful last week is not fatal. The fact that the occasional blogger will say nasty things about progressives is not fatal. It's not an all-or-nothing game.
But I do worry. Here are the scenarios that are keeping me up at night as I think through how the next several weeks play out:
* We lose any vestige of a public option in the final bill. Possible scenario: Harry Reid puts it up in the Senate and can't get cloture. He refuses to use reconciliation. He then says, "Well, I tried!" and delivers either a triggered public option or a bill entirely devoid of one - and goes into conference committee claiming that he must win on that question or the Senate won't pass healthcare reform. The bill that comes out of conference doesn't include a public option, enormous pressure is put on the House progressives, and we don't find effective ways to help them hold firm. We lose. Badly.
* We get a triggered (never-to-be-triggered) version of a public option in the bill. See above scenario.
* We get a state opt-in version, too weak to be helpful. See above.
* We get a state opt-out version. Better than the preceeding scenarios, but far from optimal. In addition to the basic injustice towards people in opt-out states who need the public option, this makes it a lot harder on progressive-leaning House Members from conservative states, as they're then being asked to vote for a bill they're going to get clobbered for, and they won't even have the ability to point to a public option for their state as a benefit.
* We get the version of the public option currently in the House bill (the best likely scenario) - and progressives outside of Congress are so frustrated and disgusted that the bill isn't progressive enough that they attack good progressive House Members who put themselves on the line to get this far. Mind you, continuing to push to make the bill better is constructive (see above scenarios for alternatives), but if we burn our bridges to our allies, then we drastically increase the amount of time it will take us to regroup for the next fight.
We still have a lot of battles in front of us. We are still fighting two wars. We have a jobs bill coming up. Financial sector reform is on the horizon. Congress is talking about doing comprehensive immigration reform.
And on top of all of that, we'll have midterms at our doors in the blink of an eye. Lose enough seats and our leverage to get things done will be gone, maybe for our lifetimes.
No pressure, my friends.
So my question to all of you is this: what do we do from here to make sure we win as much as possible in the endgame of healthcare reform and come into the next set of battles stronger than we were six months ago? |
