anvi
anvikshiki
YaBB God
Posts: 4,400
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« Reply #1 on: February 12, 2010, 12:24:07 PM » |
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I'm not applauding the process at all. I think some of the deals that were made to pass the bill in the House and Senate were disgraceful. I do think that the public finds such deals distasteful, and should. But we're talking about the upcoming campaigns in November and in two and a half years, and I'm saying that the American people have a short memory, and a lot of cynical disregard, when it comes to process stories. If the campaign argument over this bill in November is the Republican objection to the process of its passage vs. the Democratic tauting the substance of guarenteed issue, I think process will have a hard time carrying the day of that argument.
Do I think something like the Senate bill can pass the House? I suspect it can, and the reason I suspect it can is that most politicians are...well, politicains and not kamizaze pilots. A win is better than a loss, and at the end of the day, passing some health care reform rather than none is better for Democrats in the House. The other relevant fact here is that the opposition to current health care legislation in the polls is more complicated than the raw numbers. Lots of Democrats oppose the current forms of the bills because they are not all they wanted, they fall short of their utopian vision of how health care should look. But I'll go ahead and predict with some confidence that those same Democrats are more likely to be motivated to come to the polls and vote for their Rep or Senator if they moved the health care ball down the field rather than dropping the ball completely so close to passage. I think the Democrats, in any case, fare better at the polls fending off process attacks and defending substance than they do if they totally blow it.
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