For those who believe reconciliation was an option to circumvent Democrats that have sold their souls to the insurance companies, Nate Silver’s analysis is very sobering. I think when all is said and done if Healthcare Reform passes, then the negotiating tactic performed by the President will ultimately go down in history as genius as no other method has worked thus far. That being the case we must continue the tough fight of modifying this dog of a bill to one that better serves the American people.
by Nate Silver Jon Walker at has a new post up at Firedoglake entitled thusly: The Insidious Myth Of The Progressive Bill Killers. The post argues that wonks like me have greatly mischaracterized the position of the bill-killers. They don’t really think the bill is worse than nothing, Jon says. They just think a better bill can be achieved through reconciliation or some other filibuster-breaking strategy.
Really? I appreciate that Jon is injecting some subtlety into the debate. It’s been sorely lacking from most (although not all) of the kill-billers, who have unironically grabbed from a patchwork of right-wing frames to make their case. If there’s been a post from Jane Hamsher saying: "You know, actually this bill represents a lot of progress in comparison to the status quo, but it’s not all we hoped for, and I think we can afford to gamble a bit on making it better via reconciliation", then I must have missed it. Certainly, this more nuanced case has been made by some players in the debate — it’s very close to the position statements put out by the unions, for example — but it’s generally not the one we’ve seen from the activist/online left, which is the group that I and others have been specifically critical of. [CONTINUED]
