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Time to End False Bipartisanship
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Issue
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| Contributor | Craverguy |
| Last Edited | Craverguy Jun 30, 2009 02:11am |
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| Category | Editorial |
| Author | Katrina vanden Heuvel |
| News Date | Sunday, June 28, 2009 10:40:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | God, I hope David Broder is wrong. "The President has told visitors," the Washington Post columnist wrote last week, "that he would rather have 70 votes in the Senate for a bill that gives him 85 percent of what he wants rather than a 100 percent satisfactory bill that passes 52-48." The good news is that Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel is now talking about how bipartisanship may need to be redefined downward if the Democrats are going to pass meaningful healthcare reform. In a meeting with journalists last week, Emanuel proposed that healthcare legislation could be bipartisan without Republican votes. "There will be ideas from both parties, and individuals from both parties, in the final product," he said. "Whether the Republicans decide to vote for things they promoted will be up to them." (David Axelrod seconded the emotion in his appearance on ABC's "This Week.")
The trick now is to ensure that "centrist" Democrats (who, as Paul Krugman notes, "are in fact way out in right field") pay more attention to the broad majority favoring a strong public option than to the wads of dough lavished on them by big Pharma and insurance lobbyists. As Joe Conason put it in his invaluable New York Observer column, "If Congress fails to enact healthcare reform this year---or it enacts a sham reform designed to bail out corporate medicine while excluding the 'public option'---then the public will rightly blame Democrats, who have no excuse for failure except their own cowardice and corruption." Blame could well be registered in ugly midterm election results in 2010.
It's time to part ways with obstructionist Republicans and pass a strong healthcare bill with a majority vote, which is possible if efforts cease to get a handful of Republicans to cross over. |
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