Failure is Not an Option

By Dave

A plethora of health care opinions, all making the case for why we need to pass HCR, and all saying it better than I could:

William Galston

The Founders designed a representative republic, not a plebiscitary democracy. Officials are elected to make judgments on behalf of the people, and the people get to judge those judgments. Large changes are always more uncertain than is the status quo, which is why change is so hard. At some point, elected officials have to tell their constituents, “I’ve done my best to think this issue through, and this is the conclusion I’ve reached. Now it’s your turn.”

Greg Sargent

But if Dems don’t pass reform, they will never have a chance to sell a completed package to the public — and to try to convince the public that they were right, and Republicans were wrong. People will never have a chance to decide that their fears about reform were unwarranted.
Not passing reform won’t stop Republicans from attacking Dems for trying to jam an unpopular bill down the public’s throat. And failure would give Republicans more ammo, not less. It would allow the GOP to take credit for blocking the proposal, to present itself as an effective and relevant opposition, and to paint Dems — accurately — as ineffective and unable to lead.

Kevin Drum

This really is a defining moment for both Obama and the Democratic Party more broadly. So far both have failed miserably: the party is in a state of meltdown, surrendering completely to a resurgent Republican narrative, refusing to fight for anything it believes in, and caving in to a truly toxic combination of electoral fear and narrow interest group parochialism. For his part, Obama seems either unable or unwilling to rally his troops. I'm not sure which. But the American public really needs to hear some conviction from him, and so far they haven't. He's remained aloof from the healthcare upheaval, pivoted on financial regulation in a way that looks driven more by politics than by core beliefs, and has just generally sounded more chastened than reinvigorated.
This really needs to turn around fast. Another week like this — hell, another day or two like this — and we might as well start measuring the Oval Office drapes for the upcoming Cheney/Palin administration. It's time for everyone to take a deep breath and grow a pair. Today would be a good time to start.

Think Progress

Trying to pass a scaled-back version of reform would drag out the process, fail to substantially lower costs or improve access, and do so without any assurance that it will be any more popular in Congress. Democrats therefore have two choices: pass an improved version of the Senate health care bill or abandon the effort altogether. If Democrats chose the latter, millions more Americans would go without health care and health care costs would continue to skyrocket. Politically, the Democratic Party will be ridiculed for talking a big game but delivering no results. They will lose their progressive base and outsource their agenda to the Republican minority — all simply because their supermajority of 60 shrank to 59.

Paul Krugman

First of all, the strategy of playing Republican-lite, and hoping that you’ll be left alone, has been tried — and failed disastrously. Remember 2002?

Second, David Axelrod is right: the campaign against HCR has been based on lies, and the only way to refute those lies (and stop them from being rolled out again and again) is to pass the thing, and let people see it in action. It’s too bad startup is delayed under the Senate bill — but even so, that’s what you have to do.

Finally, Democrats have to realize that politics isn’t just about where you stand on issues, it’s about perceptions of a party’s character. The rap on Dems has always been that they’re wimps — and giving in on such a central part of the party’s agenda, emerging from two years in power with nothing major to show for it, will play right into that perception.

Just do it — pass health care. Then move on to confronting the bankers.

Andrew Sullivan

This is about more than health reform and we have to see it in that context. This is about a cynical nihilist attempt to break this presidency before it has had a chance to do what we elected it to do by a landslide vote. It is an attempt to destroy a majority's morale, to break a president's foreign policy autonomy, to prevent engagement in the Middle East peace process, to stop action on climate change, to restore torture, to increase tensions with the Muslim world, to launch a war on Iran. We cannot delude ourselves that if Obama fails, this is not the alternative. It is.

And we have to re-engage as powerfully as we did in the campaign to fight back against these now emboldened forces of reaction. I think this is true not just for the sake of the country but also for the sake of the GOP. The nihilist obstructionism and rhetoric they have embraced makes constitutional democracy close to impossible. Their total lack of any workable alternatives to dire problems is a form of degeneracy we have to avoid empowering.

So fight, Mr President. And to the House Democrats who won't go along with the only way to salvage health reform: this is the only sure-fire way you will lose in November. If you pass this bill, you may also go down in this climate. But you will have done something you can be proud of. Politics cannot always be about narrow self-interest. If it always is, nothing important can get done.

Do your duty. And grow some. Fight back. Explain why you're right. Tell the liberals they can always come back later to reform the bill. Just get this passed.