“A Gaffe Is Any Impolitic Statement”

Jonathan Chait limns the important difference between gaffes and honest (if misguided) expressions of ideology:

The interesting micro development of the last two years is that the [Republican] party is starting to be infiltrated by figures who come out of smaller and even more ideologically radical subcultures — candidates like Rand Paul and Sharron Angle. (Jason Zengerle has a fantastic story in TNR on Paul’s ideology.) The news media is doing a poor job of explaining this trend, in part because it insists upon viewing this new brand of radicalism through the lens of a “gaffe” — Rand Paul won’t support the Civil Rights Act! — rather than explaining it in ideological terms.

Interesting stuff to think about in light of the recent controversy stirred up by Helen Thomas. In contrast to the “W.H. Crone“ (classy!), it seems unlikely that Carly Fiorina’s recent remarks about Senator Barbara Boxer’s hair result from any passionate personal philosophy of coiffure, so I think it’s safe to call that a gaffe.

Department of Untruths: “By definition, this is not middle of the road.”

You’re going to hear a lot of this in the next few weeks. Among the many, many disingenuous Republican talking points about the health care bill, perhaps the most facially absurd is that it’s some extreme leftist fantasy version of reform. The arguments in favor of this view — that a majority of Americans and zero Republican legislators support the bill – are misleading and tautological. Chait provides the ultimate debunking. His bottom line:

Obama is signing what was, until recently, a moderate Republican health care plan by every substantive comparison or definition. The unanimity of Republican opposition says more about Republicans than it does about the plan itself.

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.

The Road Ahead On HCR

I hope to have more original analysis in the next few days (before the Blair House summit), but in the meantime Jonathan Chait has a great, great post countering all the claims that health care reform is dead.

Update: More.

Sixty

Reid got there, and it’s a staggering achievement.

Politically speaking, I think Jonathan Chait has the most interesting take on what happened. Over the summer, during the heyday of the tea parties, it looked like health care reform was doomed, or at least eviscerated. Obama’s insistence on a bipartisan bill gave Republicans free rein to negotiate in bad faith. And boy did they.

Would you look at how that turned out! As Chait writes, “The Republicans eschewed a halfway compromise and put all their chips on an all or nothing campaign to defeat health care and Obama’s presidency. It was an audacious gamble. They lost.” A gamble for which we should be forever grateful.

Of course it’s not a perfect bill. Did you expect it to be? If so, there’s a bridge I’d like to sell you. (It goes To Nowhere.) But the package we got is certainly better than nothing; it’s better than what we could have gotten if the GOP hadn’t been so brazen; and it lays the groundwork for incremental improvement. Here’s what’s in it now. Marc Ambinder—one of the smartest observers in Washington—even thinks that what the President will sign, after conference, will be more progressive than the Senate bill:

The bill that Obama signs will be “better” from the standpoint of liberal activists than the bill that the Senate is going to pass. It will contain more subsidies…probably some version of a trigger for some sort of insurance competitive mechanism…a reinstatement of mandatory cost controls for hospitals…and even tighter restrictions on insurers.

It is, after all, the most wonderful time of the year. Know hope.