Sen. Harry Reid, Our Hero

Mea culpa.  This space hasn't always been so friendly toward Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid (D-NV), but what he has pulled off in getting 60 votes in the Senate is worthy of Lyndon Johnson and other great Senate leaders in the past--even greater in some ways, since Reid doesn't have the leverage his precedessors had, and the opposition was united to oppose him.  Previous Senate Majority Leaders needed to get 51 votes out of 100.  Reid had to get 60 votes out of 60.

Yes, the final bill could be better, but there wouldn't be a final bill at all if Reid hadn't made the deals necessary to get 60 votes.  Yes, I want to strangle Joe Lieberman too, but if he votes "no," health reform goes down.  Yes, Ben Nelson (D-NE) got a sweetheart deal in getting Reid to agree to federalize Medicaid for Nebraska, but good for Ben Nelson!  This should be true for all 50 states.  Ben Nelson's move may be the harbinger of more reform!

Progressives are torqued because Reid couldn't do the impossible, which is get 60 votes for single-payer, Medicare-for-all, system.  One pundit said that if Hillary Clinton were Senate Majority Leader, she'd have told Lieberman and Nelson to stuff it, and we'd have a better bill.  Sympathetic as I am to kind words about Hillary, that strategy would have been a 58-vote loser, at best.  The Senate bill, engineered by Reid, is best bill that could have passed the Senate.  Why make the perfect the enemy of the good?  As Paul Krugman put it today:

The truth is that there isn’t a Congressional majority in favor of anything like single-payer. There is a narrow majority in favor of a plan with a moderately strong public option. The House has passed such a plan. But given the way the Senate rules work, it takes 60 votes to do almost anything. And that fact, combined with total Republican opposition, has placed sharp limits on what can be enacted.

Harry Reid has no discernible sense of humor, no charisma, no particular charm.  He's never been a vote-getting magnet, and he's trailing in his own Senate race next year.  Nevertheless, here's to Harry Reid, operator extraordinaire, master of the Senate, politician of the year.

Comments

[Hypatia]

The unrealistic liberal holding out for nothing but single payer is mostly a White House straw man. The central point is that by taking single payer off the table before the negotiating process had even started, the Democrats automatically made the public option the wild lefty option, setting it up for attack. The bill's not a total loss, but the insurance companies get millions of new coerced customers while the public gets -- no one can tell, really, until the new system is up and running.

I would also add that if there are any small improvements made to the bill in a those foolish progressives who are screaming their heads off and applying pressure now.

That said, Reid can feel proud of himself, for the moment.

[John Petty]

True, once you take single-payer off the table, then that leaves the currently-existing insurance companies with huge roles to play. That doesn't bother me so much, but the problem of not having a robust public option is that you don't, at the same time, hold them accountable.