Kevin Drum takes on the notion that there are Republican votes to be had for a more conservative approach to HCR:
This fantasy that there are Republican votes for a more moderate bill really needs to end. There are no Republican votes for healthcare reform, no matter how moderate or conservative it is. They’re opposed to healthcare reform. They’ve always been opposed to healthcare reform. They’e Republicans! There’s nothing wrong with them being opposed to healthcare reform. And they are. Full stop.
Going down this path would be dangerously delusional. It would waste time, piss off voters even more, and accomplish nothing. It's time for House liberals, labor unions, lefty activists, Blue Dogs, Democratic pro-lifers, and fence-sitting centrists to all face reality: the only way to pass healthcare reform of any kind is for the House to pass the Senate bill as is and then work to improve it later during the budget reconciliation process. It's not perfect, but it will work. Nothing else will.
I think he’s dead on, pass the Senate version of HRC and fix what you can in reconciliation and with future legislation. There’s really no point or percentage in it for Democrats to abandon the entire project when the goal line is literally in sight. They’ll lose a considerable amount of support from progressives and the Democrats can’t win based on the president’s ever waning popularity or his leadership.
Obama has not led on any of this. He’s been the careful centrist he always was. Let’s not get all wobbly over the loss of one seat in the Senate, that’s 1% of 1/2 the legislative branch, which is 1/3 of the 3 branches of government (to paraphrase last night’s Daily Show).
As for the intra-party food fight over who’s to blame for Coakley’s loss of what should have been an easy win, there’s plenty to go around. She was an awful candidate, but no worse than many an empty suit currently existing in Congress (editors note, I considered “working” instead of “existing”, but that seemed to bit of a stretch). The national part didn’t seem to pay any attention to the special election in Mass. until the final week and that was just too little and waaay too late. The president didn’t do much until the last minute either. Plus, there was absolutely no message prepared in case of a lose, just a lot of surprised people winging it. They’ve yet to recover balance.
