Kevin Drum writes:

So when Ross [Douthat] says "the chances for a rolling series of progressive victories have diminished," I think that's mistaken. There was never any real appetite for a rolling series of big progressive victories in the first place. There was healthcare reform plus a long list of tweaks and smaller projects. And that's what we're likely to get. [. . .] But big ticket items? There probably aren't any [. . .]

I could not disagree more. The biggest progressive ticket item for me is addressing income inequality. I am always amazed that people forget this. Indeed, it is emblematic of the problem that people forget (except for trotting out Marjorie Margolies Mezhvinsky last week) the truly most progressive initiative since Medicare, - the 1993 Clinton tax initiative (which lowered taxes on the poor and raised them on the rich), and the most anti-progressive policy of the Bush years (cutting taxes for the wealthy) when they discuss progressive goals. This used to be the heart and soul of Democratic politics and policy. It seems no longer.

Speaking for me only

In the middle of primary fights, citizens, activists and bloggers like to think their guy or woman is different. They are going to change the way politics works. They are going to not disappoint. In short, they are not going to be pols. That is, in a word, idiotic. Yes, they are all pols. And they do what they do. - December 6, 2007

Lawrence Lessig:

Obama's victory was achieved because his team played the old game brilliantly. Staffed with the very best from the league of conventional politics, his team bought off PhRMA (with the promise not to use market forces to force market prices for prescription drugs), and the insurance industry (with the promise (and in this moment of celebration, let's ignore the duplicity in this) that they would face no new competition from a public option), so that by the end, as Greenwald puts it, the administration succeeded in "bribing and accommodating them to such an extreme degree that they ended up affirmatively supporting a bill that lavishes them with massive benefits." Obama didn't "push[] back on the undue influence of special interests," as he said today. He bought them off. And the price he paid should make us all wonder: how much reform can this administration -- and this Nation -- afford?

Lessig dreams of change he can believe in. It is a pipe dream:

Brad DeLong joins E.J. Dionne:

Neither Democrats nor Republicans have an incentive to discuss the Republican roots of Obama's health-care plan. But that doesn't mean they're not real -- and deep.

[. . . T]he essence of the reform -- [. . .] Americans are now being asked not to shirk their responsibilities but rather to act like adults: to take on the burden, to the extent they are financially able, of making sure that when they wind up at the hospital the cost of paying for their care is not loaded onto somebody else's shoulders. The conservative DNA of ObamaCare is hardly a secret. [. . . T]here has been a conspiracy of silence among those working for the bill and those working against it.

(Emphasis supplied.) The fact that is is a conservative bill filled with Republican ideas does not make it bad substantively. But it certainly does make it hard to argue it is the greatest progressive achievement since Medicare. Indeed, that has been a long standing point for me - comparing the health bills to Medicare is absurd. Medicare and Obamacare take two fundamentally different paths. Medicare adopted a public insurance based approach and Obamacare took a regulated private health insurance market approach. One is the progressive approach - Medicare. One is a conservative approach - Obamacare. Whatever the merits of the health bills, surely adherence to progressive ideas on health care is not one of them.

Speaking for me only

Rep. Randy Neugebauer of Texas admits being the person who shouted "baby killer" during Rep. Bart Stupak's health care remarks last night. But, he says he was referring to the bill, not Stupak, and insists his actual words were 'it's a baby killer'.

Until Neugebauer 'fessed up, his buddies played the "no snitching" card and refused to give him up. Said one:

Democratic Rep. David Obey of Minnesota, who was presiding over the debate at the time, told the Talking Points Memo that he knows who yelled at Stupak but “doesn’t see any point” in identifying the speaker.

“I think people have a right to make a fool out of themselves every once in a while without causing Armageddon,” he said.

He didn't just make a fool of himself. It was conduct unbecoming a Congressman and it denigrated his office and the entirety of the proceedings. Funny how they understand the principle when it's to protect one of their own.

Now that health care issues are basically tabled for the next decade (What? You think there will be more legislation like the Grayson Medicare for all bill? Dream on), what is next on the agenda? Let's hope some good old fashioned economic populism from the Dems. The best vehicle is financial regulation:

Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., unveiled a bill Monday to overhaul the U.S. financial system, proposing new powers for the Federal Reserve to oversee the nation's largest financial firms; a consumer protection agency housed within the Fed; and a new systemic risk council headed by the Treasury Secretary to identify and monitor complex firms that could pose a threat to the country's financial stability.

Dodd's bill is entirely inadequate. Both on substance and politically. A lot of work needs to be done on this.

Speaking for me only

Chris Bowers writes:

Health reform has passed the House. I feel determined, in that this is just a step in the right direction. There is a long way to go before we achieve universal health care in this county.

I feel sad that it came at the cost of throwing reproductive rights under the bus. Any win that means hurting some of your friends is not a full win. I feel frustrated, because I know we could have won the public option campaign, but it didn't happen.

This is what progressive failure looks like under a Dem Administration and Congress. The health bills reject the progressive vision of health care reform and embrace market based view of health reform. Reproductive rights were sacrificed as were health coverage for undocumented aliens. All for someone else's vision of health reform. Let's hope that the progressive vision is wrong and that the President and the Village Dems are right.

Speaking for me only

Matt Yglesias writes:

Now that it’s done, Barack Obama will go down in history as one of America’s finest presidents. [. . . F]undamentally, he’s reshaped the policy landscape in a way that no progressive politician has done in decades.

I guess anyone can call anything progressive, but I think E.J. Dionne is right that this is essentially a GOP (from 20 years ago) bill. I hope Yglesias is right and his thesis will be tested - Obama's (and Yglesias' and the rest of the Village Dems') vision is now law. My view aligns with Atrios':

That's the title of his latest column:

Here is the ultimate paradox of the Great Health Care Showdown: Congress will divide along partisan lines to pass a Republican version of health care reform, and Republicans will vote against it. Yes, Democrats have rallied behind a bill that Republicans—or at least large numbers of them—should love. It is built on a series of principles that Republicans espoused for years.

[. . .] Republicans always say they are against “socialized medicine.” Not only is this bill nothing like a “single-payer” health system along Canadian or British lines. It doesn’t even include the “public option” that would have allowed people voluntarily to buy their insurance from the government. The single-payer idea fell by the wayside long ago, and supporters of the public option—sadly, from my point of view—lost out last December. [. . .] Democrats, including President Obama, are so anxious to get everyone health insurance that they are more than willing to try a market-based system and hope it works. It’s a shame the Republicans can no longer take “yes” for an answer.

Shorter E.J. Dionne - progressives got rolled.

Speaking for me only

Related to this post. Matt Yglesias writes in disagreement with Ezra Klein:

What happened in the health care debate is that interest groups were able to get their way on most key points without needing to seriously attempt to deliver votes in exchange. [. . .] Basically thanks to their influence over “centrist” Democrats, the interest groups were able to get 85 percent of what they wanted in exchange for absolutely nothing.

Is this really true? I think not. Making deals with PhRMA on no drug reimportation and other interest groups for no public insurance program kept them on the sidelines but I doubt it swayed many Blue Dogs. What is more telling is who Obama did not have to bargain with - progressives. This is because they knew progressives would be rolled. This brings us back to MaryB's point:

MaryB in the comments to this post:

[Nate Silver] believes (and therefore the "counterparty" could reasonably believe) that the Union negotiators could walk away (or threaten to walk away) from the table without their stakeholders making them pay any price later. They could easily explain to their stakeholders why they were doing this and they would be believed and supported.

He doesn't believe (and therefore he thinks the "counterparty" wouldn't believe) that the progressive caucus could do that. He believes that progressives would be forced by their stakeholders to pay a price (or believed that they would pay a price)if they threatened to walk away. A few points about this:

Via dougj, some upset with Change You Can Believe In:

When I voted for Hope’n'Change two years ago, I didn’t think it would involve bribing the living sh[*]t out of every major stakeholder and interest group in the country.

Told you so. Pols are pols and do what they do.

Speaking for me only

Ezra Klein:

This year, the Obama administration succeeded at neutralizing every single industry. Pharma supports the bill. Insurers are incoherent on it, but there's not a ferocious and united campaign to kill the proposal. The American Medical Association has endorsed the Senate bill. The hospitals have endorsed the bill. Labor has endorsed the bill. The business community is split, with larger employers holding their fire. You can take that as a critique of the bill's deals and concessions.

(Emphasis supplied.) Yes we can!

Speaking for me only