Health Care Now or Else: How Some Democrats See It

(Update below)

Hendrik Helzberg’s recent “Beware of Sudden Downdrafts,” column in the New Yorker serves as a classic example of why Liberals are often horrific at politics. (The other half of the equation is the fact that they think they are good at it, and often tend to be extremely self righteous, defensive, and argumentative about this — usually with far more passion than for actually showing to the country why their policies or position on a particular issue is correct or important, which they far too often take for granted as being “self evident” along with all of the rhetoric that cuts against it “self evidently” irrelevant, when it is not.)

Helzberg:

Whether yesterday’s upset in Massachusetts turns out to be a catastrophe or merely a setback now depends largely on the grown-upness, or lack of it, of liberals in the House of Representatives. I don’t see any way out of the darkness right now other than for the House to tighten its stomach muscles, pass the Senate version of the health-care bill A.S.A.P., and move on to jobs and the economy. The Senate health-care bill, however inferior to the House version, is vastly superior to the status quo. The only alternative I can discern is no bill at all—a political, substantive, and humanitarian failure that would reverberate for a generation.

This is a popular theme. As many leading commentators and “bloggers” have noted, anybody who “knows anything” knows that if this is not passed right now, and with this bill, 1) it can not be passed, and 2) it can not be brought up again, 3) it if is nothing will get done, and 4) it can not be brought up for years (along some version or another of their opponents being able to otherwise irrelevantly say “ha, you tried it and it didn’t work, you can’t try it again.”)

What Democrats, and perhaps, in particular, some liberals, tend to miss is that while it is theoretically possible that this is true, it is only true because of one reason: Democrats allow it to be played out this way, which fits in precisely with how their opponents want it to be played out, and for no good reason.

That is, there is otherwise absolutely no reason otherwise for ANY of the impediments made up above, to be true. That is, if this bill is not passed; it can be passed later. It can be brought up again. Something can be done. The bill can be changed. The bill can be improved. The bill can be more effectively sold. Opponents to the bill can be more effectively framed — particularly if a better bill is passed, and the reasons why it is better focused on, sold, and repeatedly illuminated. (Instead of Democrats simply taking for granted that “everybody knows (or thinks) this” already.)

It all comes down to the reasons why, and more importantly, the reasons that are given and sold as to why.

If there is a need for the bill, which it seems that Liberals and most Democrats (and some Republicans in fact) believe there is — some very very strongly — then Democrats can pass a bill. A good bill. Having a quagmire because of misframing and opponent deception is not a reason to pass a a bad bill or stop and never re take up the process, it is a reason to take control of the debate, make the bill address the issues more sensibly, and sell the bill. If Democrats think it is a good bill right now (those that do), then the same arguments apply. Sell it. If it is a good bill, with a majority in the Senate, you can sell it. Martha Coakley is all but irrelevant.

That’s politics. It’s come down to numbers because Democrats haven’t worked to frame the issue, or control the debate, or concoct a bill that actually addresses the root of the problem, or show why, or address the real concerns that those opposed to reform have, or stop letting Republicans they disagree with dictate to them in Congress, by making a powerful and effective case against them, without simply belittling them as if it is all so “obvious” to everybody.

What is expressed in Helzburg’s column above is pure abject defeatism. And it is exhibit A in why and how Democrats now almost always allow their opponents to control the debate.

Update: From the super popular online Daily Kos website, a recommended front page piece with about 400 recommends, 580 comments (and counting), February 1, 2010.  This title is mostly metaphor, and a little bit of hyperbole; but it’s not satire, and is in support: Ezra Klein: It’s this bill, or everybody dies.