| Central to the Blue Dog/insurance industry/Republican-led efforts to kill health care reform has been their strategy to delay until the fall the House and Senate floor votes President Obama originally wanted before August. By playing for "more time", and by assuming the on-the-ground reality we are seeing now - the rabid response of the right wing against any health care reform in August town hall meetings - the Blue Dogs fully expected the terms of the national and local debate to shift against health care reform the longer the process was drawn out.
Delay was so central to their strategy that when, as part of the Waxman-Blue Dog "compromise" in the Energy and Commerce Committee, a floor vote in the House was delayed until September, Blue Dogs proudly declared "victory":
Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (D-S.D.) said she believes the Blue Dogs have scored a major victory by getting leaders to back away from their goal of having the House vote on a healthcare bill before members return home for the month of August.
"We've achieved the victory of not having a vote on the House floor that will give every member a chance to digest what's in the bill, whether it's in a markup that occurs in Energy and Commerce or whether it's as the bill exists right now," she said. "It is because of the Blue Dog Coalition that there is no floor vote before the August break."
The Blue Dog "victory" was to kick the can down the road, wait for Obama's approval ratings to fall back to earth, and allow the teabaggers, the insurance industry, and the Blue Dogs' right-wing allies in the Republican party to attempt to shut down democratic debate and beat the crap out of progressive members of Congress for an entire month.
This is the same rhetoric of delay and obstruction which Joe Lieberman used in 1993-1994 to help kill health care reform then (and which he is, of course, reprising today).
Yesterday, in a conversation with the editorial board of the Stamford Advocate, Rep. Jim Himes, describing himself as a "tempermentally centrist" Democrat who "tend(s) to not tow the party line," proudly voiced his support for the Blue Dog strategy of delay:
Speaking to the editorial board of Greenwich Time and The Advocate, the first-term congressman said there have been several major instances where he has broken with his party's leadership since taking office in January.
Chief among them, Himes said, was his siding with Republicans and conservative Democrats in the House who want more time to digest a sweeping health care reform bill before it comes up for a vote.
"If something as important as health care reform can't stand five weeks of scrutiny and debate, then we probably should go back to the drawing board," said Himes, who defeated 21-year incumbent Chris Shays in November.
We have had 15 years since Joe Lieberman helped kill the last failed attempt at health care reform to digest the issues at hand.
And while self-described "centrist" Democratic representatives - including those who could not have been elected without the hard work of progressive activists - are busy happily applauding every day that goes by that more and more of their constituents lose coverage, go bankrupt, and die due to lack of health care reform, the national debate on this issue is meanwhile rapidly being digested and excreted on their heads by an organized right-wing effort of which they are at best an unwitting ally, at worst an active participant.
I only hope every Democratic Representative who shares these sentiments will truly enjoy the enlightening "scrutiny and debate" that crazed right-wing mobs are bringing to their town halls this month, thanks entirely to their painfully disappointing refusal to stand up and lead on this issue. |
MLN is powered by