As for the sour grapes, watching Keith Olbermann and the MSNBC crew grasp for reasons why last night was actually bad for the Republicans–now they have to show they can govern, given the sorry state of the economy their gains should have been much greater, etc.–made me realize how absurd that is.  Perhaps it’s true that the Republican majority will provide the perfect foil for President Obama and the weak class that was just elected will allow for massive Democratic wins in 2012.  But the time to write about such things is as they develop over the coming months and years.  For the moment, things unqualifiedly suck.  Just two and four years after elections that seemed to signal that the country was heading in a more progressive direction, and two years after an economic crisis which should have rallied public opinion behind the need for strong government action, we’ve turned power over to crowd that thinks that policies which twenty or thirty years ago were considered centrist signify the erosion of American freedom.

-AR

(Despite the doomsday tone of this post, I do think it’s important not to overreact.  Such as, say, asking how Democrats can stay relevant when we still control the White House and the senate.)

While the Greene story is certainly fascinating, particularly if there ends up being some kind of trickery involved, it is ultimately rather insignificant because the Republican, incumbent Jim DeMint, was an overwhelming favorite to win re-election regardless of the Democratic nominee.  What is far more significant are the crazy people Republicans have been voluntarily placing on November’s ballot through their own primaries.  On the same night as Greene’s mysterious victory, Nevada Republicans gave Sharron Angle their nomination to take on vulnerable Democratic Senate Leader Harry Reid.  Huffington Post has helpfully chronicled some of Angle’s more extreme positions, such as believing that fluoridation of water is a nefarious governmental plot, advocating the revival of prohibition, and promoting the myth that abortions cause breast cancer.  Angle’s nomination comes weeks after Rand Paul captured the Republican nomination in Kentucky’s Senate race and promptly announced his opposition to provisions of the Civil Rights Act banning private discrimination.  (This put Senate Republicans in the awkward position of choosing between their new golden child and an incredibly popular piece of legislation, not to mention their ongoing, always awkward efforts to ensure people of color that the Republican Party isn’t just for white folks.)  Paul, like Angle, subscribes to anti-government conspiracy theories, such as secret plots to bring about the union of the United States, Mexico, and Canada.

Whereas Greene’s victory merely turns a near certain Republican victory into a certain Republican victory, the primary wins of Paul and Angle, and the subsequent light shed on their more extreme views, have turned what were expected to be comfortable Republican wins into competitive races.  In short, I’m all in favor of Republicans putting as many unqualified candidates as they like on November’s ballot, Democrat or Republican, as long as they continue to do so in a way that only enhances Democrats’ prospects of holding their majority.

-AR

What does this have to do with anything of actual importance? I feel like the past months of following the health care debate have been a condensed version of my experience as a Pirates fan. Every time a new package or compromise or new procedural avenue is announced, I convince myself that it’s the one that’s going to get the bill through. And every time, thus far, I’ve been disappointed. So with the White House house announcing that “this is the week!” and the House and Senate having a tentative agreement on how to get the bill through, my reaction is both to celebrate “here we go!” and to lament “here we go again. . .”

In one way, the Democrats inability to pass a health care bill is a lot sadder than the Pirates inability to put together a winning season. (OK, in two ways: whereas passing a health care bill involves giving millions of people access to medical care, the Pirates having a winning season involves winning some baseball games.) While the Pirates’ losing records are consistent with the lack of talent, poor management, and low payrolls they’ve had over the past two decades, the Democrats have failed to pass a health care bill despite large majorities in both houses of Congress. Despite the fact that Republicans have used every procedural tool at their disposal to block legislation since they’ve been in the minority, and despite the fact that Republicans used every tool they could to pass legislation when they were in the majority, Democrats have, to this point, been unwilling to push the limits of the rules so that a simple majority vote could pass the bill. So while there’s a lot to be encouraged by in Harry Reid’s recent “get tough” letter to Mitch McConnell, it also has a “what took you so long?!?” quality.

McConnell, for his part, calls Democratic efforts to pass the bill by majority vote “a raw exercise of legislative power.” I’m not sure exactly what work the word “raw” does in that sentence, but passing a piece of legislation is no doubt an exercise of legislative power. Which is, you know, kind of an appropriate thing for the legislative branch to do.

-AR

Lind’s article suggests an interesting thought experiment.  Imagine we have no Pledge of Allegiance (as we did not through our first century as a nation.)  Barack Obama thinks one would be a good idea.  So he proposes a pledge with the exact same language as the one we now have, under God and all, and asks the Nancy Pelosi-led House of Representatives and the Harry Reid-led Senate to adopt it as the official Pledge of Allegiance of the United States of America.  How do you think Glenn Beck will react?

-AR

Saturday night the House brought health care reform closer to reality than it’s ever been. The House bill is the best of the various bill that’s been proposed, and would, among other things, ban the most egregious insurance company practices and provide subsidies to ensure all Americans could afford coverage.

Tragically, at almost the last minute, pro-life Democrats, at the urging of Catholic bishops, rejected two already difficult compromises on abortion coverage and forced a vote on an amendment offered by Rep. Bart Stupak of Michigan.  Stupak’s amendment would expand the Hyde Amendment, which bars any federal funds from subsidizing abortion, and would bar policies offered through the newly created health insurance exchange from covering abortion.  The broadly worded ban potentially has a very broad affect on access to abortion.  The measure undermines the cause of health care reform by denying coverage for an important medical procedure. It also represents a betrayal to a constituency vital to the recent Democratic ascendancy, and underscores the shameful state of female representation in our government.

It’s unclear exactly how women will be affected if the Stupak amendment makes it into the final bill and becomes law.  For lowest income women, Stupak maintains the unjust status quo, since the Hyde Amendment already prevents Medicaid from covering elective abortions.  The next tier, women between 150% and 400% of the federal poverty line, are those  most likely be buying insurance through the exchange, and thus to be barred from purchasing insurance that covered elective abortion.  Because of subsidies and insurance market reforms, these are also the women that have the most to gain from reform overall, and they would see their overall health care costs lowered the most.  Those who potentially have the most to lose under Stupak are women who currently receive health insurance from their employer that covers abortion.  Some are speculating the restrictions Stupak places on policies sold within the exchange will lead insurance companies to stop offering abortion coverage even in policies sold outside the exchange, though this is not a certain outcome.

It’s difficult to predict what happens to the Stupak amendment as the health care bill moves forward.  Pro-choice groups and members of Congress are hopeful that the Senate will at least weaken the restrictions on abortion coverage, and that the final bill will contain something less egregious on abortion.  This hope is shared by the President.  At least one Democratic Senator, however, has already said he cannot vote for the bill unless the Stupak language is in it.  And unlike the House, where the Democrats can afford to lose 40 votes, Harry Reid cannot afford to lose a single Democratic vote to pass the bill.  And so it’s possible that the Democrats will ultimately be faced with the choice of passing a health care that, for all the good it does, also sets back women’s rights (and, in a topic that deserves its own post, may contain a terribly punitive provision driven by anti-immigrant sentiment).  If that is what it comes down to, my hope is that, after fighting like hell to strip the anti-choice and anti-immigrant provisions, Democrats will pass the bill.  America’s regressive attitudes towards reproductive rights and immigration, and the racial and gender imbalance of Congress, cannot be fixed in the next two months.  The most abusive practices of insurance companies, and the tragedy of 46 million uninsured Americans, can be.

A historical analogy is the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which established a minimum wage and 40 hour work week.  To secure the support of Southern Democrats to pass the Act, occupations that were disproportionately black and female, namely domestic work and agriculture, were excluded from the Act’s protections.  Clearly this is one shameful chapter in our shameful history on issues of race and gender.  But there’s a more optimistic reading as well; the Act immediately improved the lives of millions of workers, helped fuel the creation of the middle class, and, as America has progressed in its views on race and gender, the law has been expanded, occupations have become less segregated, and more and more people have been able to take advantage of the Act’s protections.

The danger of that more optimistic reading is that it can be too easily turned into an excuse for always discounting the rights of disfavored and/or less powerful groups in the name of compromise and “the greater good.”   Republicans have gone all-in with a strategy of preventing the government from doing anything, and are likely to continue invoking abortion and immigration whenever they can to kill legislation.  It’s one thing to go through the academic exercise of deciding whether it’s better to have health care reform without coverage for abortion or no health care reform at all.  It’s much more difficult, at least as an outsider, to gauge whether that’s actually the choice we are faced with.  How hard did the Democratic leadership push to keep the Stupak language out?  What other compromises could have been made?  How credible were the threats of pro-life Democrats to kill health care reform without Stupak?

I’m not sure what the answers to these questions are, but I’m willing to assume that Nancy Pelosi knows what she is doing and does not and will not make concessions on abortion and immigration lightly.  I’m glad the House bill passed, and while I hope everything is done to weaken or remove the Stupak language, if President Obama ends up signing a bill with the Stupak language in, I’ll be happy on that day as well.  As I said at the outset, I recognize that that’s easy for me to say.  But I have to imagine there are millions of women struggling to pay medical bills, without insurance, underinsured, or simply paying too much, driven into bankruptcy or denied coverage because of a pre-existing condition, who will be happy as well.  It’s terrible if health care reform has to be passed this way.  But it has to be passed.

-AR