Nervous Democrats and Health Care Reform

“… you're missing the main dynamic in the scene, which is how the Democrats are throwing away the game. They've become so used to kowtowing to the Republicans, become so used to knuckling under that even when they have a filibuster proof majority they act as they've got someone's boot on their throat.”

- Comment from an OperaDem reader

My reader expresses the frustration of many of us on the Left. Why do we seem to be always looking for those two or three votes from Republican Senators, whose price seems to be some core portion of the program under discussion? We should be able to ram through whatever we want. In the fight over the stimulus package, direct spending was sacrificed for tax cuts – the price of three Republican votes.

We are seeing it again in the debate on health care reform. Almost from the beginning, Obama seemed cut the public option from his health care proposal in order to gaim the votes of Republicans like Charles Grassley, who responded by repeating the canard about
“Death panels.”


Can anyone imagine LBJ making such weak use of 60 votes? Johnson was able to push through the 1957 Civil Rights act against the opposition of Southern Democrats and some Republicans. Strom Thurmond mounted the longest one-man filibuster in Senate History. But Johnson was not afraid of a filibuster and got it through.

Modern Senate Democrats have a long history of being afraid to wield power. Harry Reid seems cut from the same cloth as Tom Daschle. Daschle couldn’t muster effective opposition to the Bush tax cuts or to the war – even though Bush was a minority President. Reid seems equally unable to gather and guide his troops, despite having a significantly more popular Democrat in the White House.

It appears that Democrats in the Senate are reluctant to look like they are behaving like Republicans. Not so in the House. Speaker Nancy Pelosi is willing to wield power like Tom DeLay. She punishes her enemies and rewards her friends. She is able to keep the Democrats in her chamber in line – even through the summer recess.

But there are factors involved in how the Democrats are behaving.

First there is a significant philosophical gulf between the Democrats in the House of Representatives and the Democrats in the Senate. The Senate is significantly more conservative. Members have to run state wide races and appeal to a wider range of voters. The Senate’s more liberal members tend to be to the Right of the House’s more Liberal members. Even a hard core liberal like Sen. Barbara Boxer is to the right of Rep. Barbara Lee

The Democrats in the House are more unified – both ideologically and through the rules of their chamber. It is no accident that House reported out their proposal sooner than the Senate. It is also no surprise that the proposal is more liberal and matches the desires of the voters. The House was designed to register the waves of public sentiment. But the Founders were terrified by the French Revolution and designed the Senate to put the brakes on public opinion. That is what is happening here.

We also have to remember Democrats don’t have 60 votes in the Senate, they have 58. Two of the 60 are Joe Liebermann and Bernie Sanders. Sanders may defect if the health care proposal is too conservative and Liebermann may defect if it is too liberal. This dynamic gives conservative Democrats more leverage. There is no proposal that will garner all Democratic votes. So Obama needs an insurance policy of a few Republican votes.

The Democrats also struggle with the fact they are a more diverse party than the Republicans. It is easier for the Republicans to march in lockstep simply because there is little diversity of opinion in the Party. The Republicans were able to ram a lot of their proposals through because there was, and is, little philosophical difference between members of each chamber and among themselves. There was not the same gulf between Tom DeLay and Bill Frist as there is between Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. Whereas the Republicans are a dull philosophical monotone, the Democrats are a cacophony of opinion. That cacophony makes it hard to sing in harmony.

Unfortunately Obama has been reluctant to get involved. In an effort to avoid the mistakes of Clinton and his health care reform, the President has been content to draw broad outlines and stay out of the nitty-gritty work of creating legislation. By doing that he has denied the reluctant Senate Democrats the needed cover his popularity. If he had pushed hard at the beginning for a public option in his health care reform, few would have been able to say no. But he has stayed on the sideline long enough that his popularity has dwindled. Even though his popularity is high, it is no longer high enough to provide backing for reluctant Democrats.

This leaves Health Care reform in the hands of 58 nervous Democrats. Let’s hope enough of them find the courage to do what is right for the country.