On Super Tuesday, Mitt Fails to Lock It Down

The janitors are sweeping up the confetti after the Super Tuesday celebrations last night (at Gingrich 2012 HQ, those janitors are fifth graders) and looking back, "Super" seems a little hyperbolic. By the numbers, Mitt Romney's the big winner, but the battle actually left him looking weak. In his least contested and most decisive win -- Massachusetts -- turnout was positively anemic. You could argue that this was because Mitt was a shoe-in, so people didn't bother voting. But that doesn't explainb Ohio, a hotly contested race with likewise light voter turnout. "Turnout has been low... modest, you can insert the term you want," says Secretary of State Jon Husted.

In that state, Romney outspent Santorum 3:1 and it was a nailbiter all the way to the wire. As a result, it looks more like an election bought than an election won. And momentum? It's just not there.

Politico:

Romney, as we’ve written before, is likely heading into another bounce-free news cycle. The former Massachusetts governor’s campaign and its backers had hoped to use a strong night to start making the case that it’s time to wind this down, and his election night speech, delivered from Boston, was supposed to convey the aura of a nominee-in-waiting.

But in the end, he underperformed. He does not head into Wednesday with the spin on his side, and his campaign has done little to finesse expectations throughout this race. The muddled results Tuesday — Romney’s cache of victories, Newt Gingrich’s win in Georgia and Santorum’s surprisingly strong clinch in Tennessee accompanied by wins in Oklahoma and North Dakota — are going to do little to bring an immediate end to the primary.

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The GOP's 'Punish Everything and Everyone' Mentality

I was tempted to write that an LA Times headline -- "Medical help for illegal immigrants could haunt Mitt Romney" -- demonstrates everything that's wrong with today's Republican Party. It hits a lot of the bullet-points; a lack of compassion or mercy, a complete absence of anything approximating common sense, and the belief that every problem can be solved by punishing someone.

The Massachusetts healthcare law that then-Gov. Mitt Romney signed in 2006 includes a program known as the Health Safety Net, which allows undocumented immigrants to get needed medical care along with others who lack insurance.

Uninsured, poor immigrants can walk into a health clinic or hospital in the state and get publicly subsidized care at virtually no cost to them, regardless of their immigration status.

The program, widely supported in Massachusetts, drew little attention when Romney signed the trailblazing healthcare law. But now it could prove problematic for the Republican presidential hopeful, who has been attacking Texas Gov. Rick Perry for supporting educational aid for children of undocumented immigrants in Texas.

So undocumented immigrants, including children, should be sick and uneducated. Because a sick and uneducated segment of the populace is just so damned good for a society.

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Geez Dems, Settle Down

After the election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts, the normally rational -- if exuberant -- Rep. Barney Frank lost his damned mind.

"I am hopeful that some Republican senators will be willing to discuss a revised version of health care reform," Frank said in a statement. "Because I do not think that the country would be well served by the health care status quo. But our respect for democratic procedures must rule out any effort to pass a health care bill as if the Massachusetts election had not happened. Going forward, I hope there will be a serious effort to change the senate rule which means that 59 are not enough to pass major legislation, but those are the rules by which the health care bill was considered, and it would be wrong to change them in the middle of this process."

So Frank was saying that the House shouldn't accept the Senate version of healthcare reform, that we should start over with Republican input (because that worked so well the last time), and that we ought to do something about the abuse of the filibuster.

On that last argument, Frank is right. The use of the filibuster by the Republican minority has been unprecedented. Changing the rules wouldn't be. Originally, it took two-thirds majority to invoke cloture, but this was changed to the current three-fifths in 1975. There is nothing barring changing the rules again and the change would only require a simple majority.





Luckily, Frank came out with a much better thought out response last night. Speaking with Talking Points Memo's Brian Beutler, Frank said he'd reconsidered his stance and he'd be open to accepting the Senate version, if measures within it would be revisited through separate legislation -- which seems to be the concensus plan on that tactic anyway. If the House accepts the Senate version as is, then the filibuster is a moot point -- the legislation wouldn't go back to that chamber.

But Frank's reaction is far too typical of people on the left. The loss of the "filibuster-proof" majority isn't the end of the freakin' world. Stephen Colbert nailed it when he said that Republicans now control a "41-seat super-minority" -- i.e., the Republicans are still getting their asses kicked and they're not even close to controlling the Senate. No party has held this large a minority since the 1970s -- unless you count the majority Democrats held a few days ago. Acting like Republicans have a majority in the Senate is insane, stupid, defeatist, and wildly unrealistic.

How long will the Democrat's Senate majority last? Well, all indicators say that -- after the 2010 elections -- two years at least. The current "all the Democrats are gonna die!" media talk is BS. No one seriously believes that Republicans will take either chamber and people who say otherwise are catapulting the propaganda.

Huffington Post:

"I do not think [Republicans] will regain either chamber," [former Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said Tuesday], in an event sponsored by The Progressive Book Club and moderated by the Huffington Post. "More than that I don't think they deserve to. They would return us to policies that soundly didn't work... That being said, we've won almost all there is to win in the House. Luckily we have some open seat opportunities. So we have got a lot of tough turf we are going to defend and a lot of people who won races in close to ideal circumstances. So they are going to have to run really good campaigns."

"We have a lot more ground to defend in the House and the Senate and the governor's races than the Republicans but no, I think we are going to maintain control of both of those chambers, I firmly believe," he added. "And we are going to have to work very hard to do it."

And, before you fault me for citing an obviously partisan argument, allow me to point out that Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele agrees. Democrats will lose seats, yes, but not control. Still, expect everyone to wake up one Novemember morning to news of the "electoral disaster" that leaves Democrats in control of both houses of congress.

But the truth is much simpler and much more obvious than everyone's put it; Democrats are going to have to deal with legislation in the same way that most majorities have throughout American history. A 60 seat majority is a rare occurrence and, in our current situation, pretty much a conceptual thing anyway.

So, for Democrats, I have one bit of advice; stop freaking out and get back to work.

-Wisco


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Surveying the Damage

I'm getting sort of a late start today, so this one's probably going to be pretty short. See, we don't have to give a crap about Joe Lieberman anymore.

OK, so that's way too short. I'll expand on things a bit. In case you missed it, turns out Scott Brown won that special election in Massachusetts. As a result, the Democratic caucus doesn't have that 60 seat majority in the Senate anymore. Now, someone point me to an instance where we had it before. On the issue of healthcare reform, a "filibuster-proof" majority was entirely theoretical.

If you're looking for good news to take away from this, I've got plenty. First off, the Democrats now have the second largest majority any party has had since the 70s. This majority is only eclipsed by the one they had before. Second, this loss of the supposedly sixtieth seat has knocked the training wheels off Harry Reid's bike. He's going to have to run this thing they way the vast majority of Senate majority leaders have in the past. Third -- and I've already mentioned this -- Lieberman, along with Nelson, Lincoln, Landrieu, et. al., have been defanged. The number Democrats have to shoot for now is fifty-one. Divas can pout and wail all they want, but their stock just dropped through the floor.





In the House, the mood among the leadership is defiant.

Talking Points Memo:

In the hours and minutes before Republican Scott Brown won Ted Kennedy's Senate seat, House Democratic leadership sounded resilient, even optimistic notes about the possibility of passing health care reform anyhow. But that puts them at odds with their rank and file members, particularly progressives, who, based on press reports and interviews conducted as returns were coming in, but before the race was called, now have a hard time seeing an endgame.

I think people are missing the big picture here. There are uninsured people right now. And those people are suffering the consequences of that lack of coverage right now. 45,000 people die every year because they lack coverage. Republicans don't care about that, Blue Dogs don't care about that, Joe Lieberman doesn't care about that, and now progressives don't care about that? Please. Calling the current situation in America a "healthcare crisis" is in no way hyperbolic. If we drop this now, 45,000 people will die. That's more than 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina combined -- in fact, multiply the total for both by nine and you still come up short. We're not going to do anything about that?

Really?

If House progressive can't do the right thing, swallow the lousy Senate bill, and go back to fix it with separate legislation (and they totally should), then the Senate should go with budget reconciliation. A lot of the immediate provisions can be passed on a majority vote and the ones that wouldn't have kicked in for a few years anyway can be passed later.

It should not be forgotten that Harry Reid and Max Baucus blew this round by wasting time looking for Republican votes they didn't need. This thing was going to be done in August. It's tempting to say that Baucus and Reid couldn't get their crap together, but it's more accurate to say they refused to.

Baucus is out of the picture at this point and he really should have as many knives hanging out of his back as anyone this morning. But Reid is still a player. If he can't get it together now, then he just plain can't get it together.

And Senate Democrats should find someone who can.

-Wisco


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Life After Massachusetts

Today is a big day for healthcare reform. Or, at least, that's what everyone keeps saying. Apparently, the whole thing hinges on one Senate vote (where have we heard that before?) and that seat, vacated by the death of Senator Edward Kennedy, is being filled by a special election today. The Republican, Scott Brown, is favored to win and this means the one vote everything depends on would be "nay."

Now seems like a good time to remind everyone that healthcare reform was originally scheduled to be finished last August. But then Harry Reid buckled and let Max Baucus go on an interminable snipe hunt for Republican votes. And here we are today, with zero Republican votes. Good job, Max and Harry. You guys are just so competent.

Of course, the idiocy of Senate Democratic leadership may come without consequence. The Democrat in the Massachusetts race, Martha Coakley, could very well win this. Polls have been all over the place, suggesting that this is a dynamic race. Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.





And preparations for the worst are already going on. For her part, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says we're getting reform, whether or not Democrats have 60 votes.

Raw Story:

Speaking to reporters on Monday she suggested that even if Republican Scott Brown becomes a Senator from Massachusetts, it "doesn't mean we won't have a health care bill."

Instead, it would simply be "a question about how we would proceed," she explained, according to The San Francisco Chronicle.

"I heard the Republican candidate in Massachusetts say, 'Let's go back to the drawing board,'" Pelodi continued. "The drawing board, for the Republican party, on health care, is to tear it up, throw it away and shred it and never revisit it. This is the opportunity of a generation. If this opportunity is not realized, there won't be health care for every American. There's no back to the drawing board."

So, without the 60, what can Democrats do? Turns out there are a lot of options. The first possibility is for the House to accept the Senate version of the bill, without amendments. If this were to happen, the Senate's original passage of the bill would be the final vote for that chamber. Without amendments to agree to, there would be no second vote and the number of Republicans wouldn't make any difference.

Of course, the Senate bill is a lousy bill and whether the House would accept it word for word is an open question. Still, the possibility is there and I can't imagine that it's not at least on the table as an option.

Another possibility is passing it right now and pronto. If Brown wins, he won't be seated immediately, so passing legislation before he's sworn in also negates his no vote. The problem with this one should be obvious, though -- if we could get this done right away, it would've been done in August. Apparently, there's also a perception problem with this.

"Ultimately, rushing a bill through Congress could prove politically damaging to Democrats," writes Lea Winerman for PBS, "giving Republicans the opportunity to accuse them of ignoring the will of voters." This line of criticism strikes me as particularly insane, because it would pass on a majority vote. But Democrats have screwed up messaging wars before and I wouldn't bet against them blowing that one, too.

Finally, there's budget reconciliation. Using this, they wouldn't be able to pass the entire bill, but a good chunk of it. Then they'd go back and pass provisions point by point as separate laws. According to Rep. Chris Van Hollen, Democrats are "prepared for the process of using reconciliation."

And, of course, there's the final option, in which Brown is seated, votes to filibuster, and the whole thing goes down in flames. Given the awful leadership up and down the line on this issue, don't bet against this one.

While it's still possible that Martha Coakley can pull this off, it's hard to believe that Democrats aren't already preparing their post-Massachusetts game plan. Whatever it is, it can't possibly be as bad as everything else they've done so far.

-Wisco


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