OH NO: Socialism Has Come To America

Or rather: Yay, it happened!

I’m not going to wade into the actual politics that led to health care reform’s passage — Yglesias and Chait do a fine job of that, and Bart Stupak is just so tiresome to think about, and really, Peggy Noonan, is “demon pass” the best you could come up with?

The noise is just noise, especially when there are practical consequences to think about. Soon everyone will have health insurance! And yes, while it is true that the whole nightmare debate isn’t quite over — the reconciliation bill, which, don’t let’s forget, improves the package, still has to tumble through the Senate — it is also true that the bill passed by the Senate in December will, with the President’s signature this week, become law. A huge part of American life will be improved by the stroke of a pen.

What I think is interesting is what can happen next. Can, not will. There are so many predictions and opinions, and all the pundits are so convinced of their right(eous)ness:

It’ll kill the Democrats in November! Think again! Major reforms always become popular over time! It’s poisoned our politics! We’ll repeal it! Good luck with that! Baby killer!

Shut up, all of you. (Especially the last.)

If there’s any advice I would give to a casual observer of this mess, it would be to turn off the TV, click “close tab” on everything except cat videos and your Netflix Instant Player, and reflect on the fact that half a century of work by progressives has finally paid off. That’s a long time, and anyone who thinks they can untangle the meaning of it in less than 24 hours is fooling themselves. 99% of what the pundits are saying today will be meaningless by tomorrow. They have no idea what they’re talking about! Remember when everyone was saying reform was dead after a moderate Republican beat a terrible Democratic party hack in a special election by a few hundred thousand people in a state that already had universal health insurance? Yeah, exactly.

So let’s all do ourselves a favor, take a step back, and if like me you think health care reform was a moral and historical imperative, gloat softly, to ourselves. Of course it’s difficult not to enjoy the hilarity of the Right’s meltdown. Feel free to do that too. (I mean, come on. You can’t make this stuff up.) But there’s still plenty of work to be done — on jobs, on the environment, on gay rights, on any number of problems America faces today. But we can cross this one off the list, for now, and that’s something.

One last point: if for some weird reason you’re interested in what the reform package actually does (and when), check out here, here and here. You’ll be surprised how banal socialism is when you get down to the details.

Is HCR Dead Without Coakley?

Not necessarily. And now for some backtracking.

In my last post, I bemoaned the likely election of Republican Scott Brown in the Massachusetts special Senate election today as the death knell to passage of health care reform, since the obstructionism of Senate Republicans has made it impossible, pretty much since Obama’s inauguration, to pass anything without a supermajority.

That was probably a little hasty, and a little misleading. Here’s why:

1. Even if Brown wins tonight, that doesn’t mean health care is immediately dead. It would take at least 10 days, probably 15, to certify the election, possibly giving the Democrats time to push a bill through with interim Senator Paul Kirk’s vote. Of course, nobody prefers that HCR pass on a technicality or the outcome of a lawsuit over MA special elections law, but for those of us who think HCR is more important than politics, this outcome would be better than nothing.
2. It might not even matter what happens in the Senate. Nancy Pelosi is going around telling reporters that “we will have health care—one way or another” and Steny Hoyer was quoted saying the Senate bill “clearly is better than nothing.” These remarks seem to indicate that House Democratic leaders are willing to push the Senate version through, despite the abortion language that has Bart Stupak (ugh) and friends saying they’ll vote it down. Whether Pelosi has the votes remains to be seen.
3. Martha Coakley could still win. Nate Silver gives her a 25% chance of winning, and emphasizes an important fact about this:

People are acting, however, as though 25 percent is the same as zero percent. And—as disappointing as it might be to be in this position—obviously it is not. This is not some basketball game where the score suddenly became Brown 75, Coakley 25; a 25 percent chance of winning means, quite literally, 25 percent.

So let’s lay it out there: Brown is heavily favored to win, although it’s far from certain; the outcomes of special elections are notoriously difficult to predict. If Brown does win, passage of health care reform becomes significantly more difficult, although not impossible. No matter what happens, Lost returns with new episodes on February 2nd.

And one more thing: the outcome of one special election in Massachusetts is not a “referendum” on the President and his “liberal agenda.” That’s idiotic, and if you think it’s true you watch far too much Fox News and know far too little about MA politics. The tenor of this election reflects dissatisfaction with the corruption and hackishness of the good-old-boy Democratic party in Massachusetts—concealed for so many decades behind the enormous historical stature of Ted Kennedy—coupled with a populist Tea Party-style uprising over the economy and channeled into a contest between a charismatic unknown and a career pol who can’t campaign to save her life.

But you should still vote for Coakley.