Being into the whole history thing enough to have written a book on it, I tend to take a long view on the big policy battles we fight today. As I wrote the other day, no piece of legislation ever gets to perfection, and on plenty of them you can have a perfectly legitimate debate even over the most well-intentioned bill over whether it does more harm than good. In addition to the actual policy particulars, lawmakers have to weigh (if they care about political survival) a wide range of other factors, including the political implications both nationally and in their home districts, the symbolism of what they are doing, how the interest groups and donors that matter the most to them are impacted, and how the media nationally and back home are treating the issue. Trying to factor in all these things is intense, and it is understandable that politicians sometimes have trouble making up their minds.
For reasonably progressive-minded advocates and lawmakers on a huge issue like health care, after you factor in all of the above, at the end of the day you also have to ask yourself two very big questions. The first is whether the passage of this legislation sets the stage on other issues for better or worse things to come. The second is whether the legislation, even with all of its flaws and compromises, creates a platform to build on in the future.
Watching Larry King and he has a panel of two Democrats, two Republicans to analyze various things, and the two Democrats are Paul Begala and Joan Walsh.
Interesting because both of them referred to the fact that they were Hillary supporters and had been critical of Obama to build up their subsequent praise of him in how he had won them over the past month or two.
It made their points more effective I thought, lending them some additional credibility beyond your usual partisan flacks. This is an advantage of having a hotly contested primary I hadn't considered. I don't know if Obama's campaign had anything to do with them appearing on CNN, but if so, it is a smart play.
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