Via Glenn Greenwald, Russ Feingold lets one slip:

"This bill appears to be legislation that the president wanted in the first place, so I don’t think focusing it on Lieberman really hits the truth," said Feingold.

Probably true. Here's a little focus on Feingold though - what was he doing to stop this capitulation? He helped nobody by his undermining of the reconciliation strategy. It's great that Feingold has his "noble principles," but what exactly did he do to forward them? Not that much really. Same for Sherrod Brown and all of Ezra's heroes. Lose the war and be crowned a King by the Village. Sheesh.

Speaking for me only

Howard Dean is exhorting Democrats to kill the bill because it doesn't have a Medicare buy-in proposal. Sigh. [. . ] In the end, this isn't about them, and though their states and their pet issues might benefit if they tried to make it about them, the process, and thus the result, would be endangered.

What an a**hole. Ezra can not imagine that Howard Dean just might effin' disagree with him on thinking passing this bill is good policy. Listen to your Village Wonk Blogger Very Serious People and just STFU. He's no better than Tom Friedman.

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. . . and go to reconciliation. If it can be done, I'm all for it. I think it is as likely as Wyden/Bennett or single payer at this point.

We live in the world we live in and have to make choices based on that. So like Atrios, I am not sure if I support a Yes vote on the Lieberman Bill. Still have to go through the Ben Nelson negotiations first.

One thing for sure, it is nothing to cheer about. Certainly not the "most progressive legislation since LBJ." That honor goes to Bill Clinton's 1993 Tax Act. (Good place to make this point - all that money for the 30 million new insured in 2014? It depends on funding by the Congresses of 2013-2014, 2015-2016, and so on.)

Speaking for me only

Josh Marshall writes:

The best argument I've heard from people who say the emerging bill isn't just insufficient but just bad law is this: If you're going to force people to buy coverage (mandates), you need to provide them an alternative to buying private sector health insurance to prevent them from getting gouged by the insurance companies. In the abstract that makes a lot of sense. And it even makes a decent amount of sense in the non-abstract, real world. [. . .] My point though is that if you are worried about mandates now (and I think that's a very legitimate worry) you should have been worried about them with a Public Option too.

(Emphasis supplied.) Heh. Apparently Josh missed that whole months long debate. Pretty sure I posted on it a few times. Pretty sure I saw other people do so too. But hey, we're not Very Serious People so . ..

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Apparently, the only person who was wrong about Obama was me, judging from this Balloon Juice thread. I knew that his policy positions were like Hillary Clinton's (or any mainstream Dem, as Kos puts it). But I thought, despite my disagreements with his political style, that the historic opportunity he was presented coupled with his immense political talent would lead him to become our FDR (who did not change politics, he changed how we think about government, much more important.) I wrote that a lot here, especially after the financial meltdown in September 2008.

It seems pretty clear that I was wrong. Apparently, I was the only one. Everyone else knew what they were getting -- small bore, incrementalist, Beltway centrism. Of course this is "better than Bush." But I thought we would get something bigger and better. Yes, I am pretty darn disappointed.

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Jon Cohn pats progressive activists on the head:

Disappointed progressives may be wondering whether their efforts were a waste. They most decidedly were not. The campaign for the public option pushed the entire debate to the left--and, to use a military metaphor, it diverted enemy fire away from the rest of the bill. If Lieberman and his allies didn't have the public option to attack, they would have tried to gut the subsidies, the exchanges, or some other key element. They would have hacked away at the bill, until it left more people uninsured and more people under-insured. The public option is the reason that didn't happen.

(Emphasis supplied.) I guess Cohn missed the part where Ben Nelson is still undecided (and who knows about Lincoln and Landrieu.) I wonder if this bill could ever reach the point where the Village Bloggers will say "kill the bill." I think we will certainly be testing their limits before all is said and done.

Speaking for me only

Ezra Klein asks as if the answer has not already been given a number of times. I wrote about it below, in the context of when the health care reform battle was lost but let's repeat the point - President Obama should never have allowed Max Baucus to hijack his timetable for health care reform. Because once he did, the reconciliation card was taken off the table.

This was important for two reasons. First, having the real possibility of reconciliation for health care reform would have given Obama and the Democrats bargaining power in the regular order (60 vote) negotiations. For example, if Lieberman (or Nelson or Lincoln or Landrieu) pulls his stunt in October, then you could very credibly say, 'well Joe (or Ben, etc.), we'd love to have your input in this bill, but we can't meet your demands. We'll have to do the bill via reconciliation.' As we all know, the big objections from these folks was about public insurance programs - all easily doable via reconciliation (as is Ezra's precious Exchange btw). This would be a very credible threat. Second, if they remained recalcitrant, then you DO do a bill by reconciliation.

Of course, what Ezra will NOT tell you is that he prefers the Lieberman bill to the bill that would emerge from reconciliation. You see, despite the protestations to the contrary, while the Village Bloggers had no objection to the public option (like Obama), they also don't really give a damn about it. That it is out of the bill is not really a problem for them. As I wrote earlier today, Ezra came clean on his lack of interest in the public insurance programs:

Via Charles Lemos, when the Democratic Party stood for something other than "better than Bush," and when Democratic Presidents were not bystanders, impotent or irrelevant:

John Cole takes exception to my labelling of Ezra Klein as a Village Blogger. He does this in the context of Charles Lane's attack on Ezra's attack on Joe Lieberman.

I think John misunderstands my point. The Washington Post editorial page, the Weekly Standard, Marty Peretz's wing of The New Republic are part of the Neocon Village. Obviously, Ezra is not a part of that. But there is a different Village in Washington as well. It is the Village that went after Matt Taibbi (who I personally do not care for. See Yglesias and Ezra going after Taibbi.) It is the Village that defends Obama and his people - see Ezra defending Rahm.)

My point is not to delegitimize what they do. Much of it is good and much of it I agree with. Rather it is to put what they do in the proper context. They are not "progressive bloggers" as the term is generally understood (neither am I.) They are tied to Establishment DC Dems and express their views from that perspective. It is an important function, indeed, a bridge between two distinct camps. But it is important to recognize they are in different camps. I try to highlight that fact.

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It's all academic now, but Ezra Klein finally lays out his cards on what he thought was the important part of the reform in the health care reform proposals:

Reconciliation, in other words, tips the bill towards an expansion of the public sector rather than a restructuring of the private sector [. . .] To be very clear, this is not a trade I'm eager to see reformers make. You lose too much in reconciliation, and gain too little. The exchanges are too important, and so too are the insurance regulations and delivery-system reforms. But if Democrats end up in reconciliation, this bill is going to get a lot worse from the perspective of its skeptics.

(Emphasis supplied.) Ezra was never against expanding public insurance programs. But he never thought much of them. In a sense, the bill that will be enacted is what Ezra wanted (coincidentally, it is what President Obama wanted.) Again, I do not begrudge him his opinions. I just disagree with them. I do begrudge his disingenuity in his writings and TV appearances as a "public option supporter." He never really cared about the public option. His ideal was not single payer. It was Wyden-Bennett. (Of course, both had an equal chance of passage - ZERO.) He should have been more forthright about that.

Speaking for me only

The moment is easy to spot - when Democrats allowed Max Baucus to delay delivery of the Finance Committee proposal in July.

Prior to that, President Obama had said earlier in July:

President Obama: Well, here's what I've said. We cannot delay any longer. [. . .] I think it was telling that some of you may have seen. A Republican Senator saying this weekend saying. "we're just going to delay and delay because if we can stop Obama on this, this is going to be his Waterloo. We'll break him." [. . ]. We are working as hard as we can and I've told Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi that it is critical that we see serious forward motion before people leave [for August recess.]

When Democrats allowed the Baucus stall, they effectively took reconciliation off the table, even though Obama said in July:

Via Steve Benen, Nelson is undecided:

The room erupted in applause when Specter reminded the group, "I came to this caucus to be your 60th vote." But soon after the speech, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) left the session early, telling reporters he remained undecided.

Folks think Nelson will just aim to add a Stupak Amendment. I disagree. Nelson will soon being intoning about the cost of the bill and the tax provisions. Expect the Medicaid expansion to suffer the brunt of Nelson's demands.

Speaking for me only