This seems to have gone beneath the radar for too long and someone needs to start screaming about it. The Democrat running to replace Evan Bayh, Brad Ellsworth, is one of the members of Stupak’s gang:
11 Stupak bloc:
Bart Stupak, Jerry Costello, Charlie Wilson, Kathy Dahlkemper, Joe Donnelly, Joseph Cao (R), Steve Driehaus, Brad Ellsworth, Marion Berry, Marcy Kaptur, Dan Lipinski.
If Ellsworth votes to kill HCR, I can’t imagine why anyone would campaign for him.
demo woman
Medical deductions are allowed now if you exceed a certain percentage of income or have a Health Savings Account. Technically tax savings are allowed even if your insurance company provides for abortions. Where is the uproar by Stupak and the others?
Koz
I can’t imagine why anybody would vote for him if he doesn’t. It’s going to be hard enough carrying the scarlet letter around with him.
Zifnab
/raises hand
Because the Indiana Democratic political machine and the Bayh $13 million war chest anointed him as “electable”?
In all fairness, 538 has done the math on this and as bad as Bayh has ever been, he’s still a mile ahead of any given Republican. So I can see people voting for him. But I don’t know where he’s going to get any grass roots support. Dude’s a douche.
John Quixote
These guys are bluffing. They just want the attention. They know that voting against it will make it very hard to raise money for November. If Ellsworth votes against it, his campaign is dead in the water. The state GOP will bludgeon him for being wishy-washy, and the lack of dem votes will lead to him getting crushed by 10 points.
Steaming Pile
@demo woman: Good point. FSA money can be used for abortions, sterilizations, birth control pills, IUDs, all that stuff strict practicing Catholics hate. Why isn’t the StupidPac all up in arms about that?
Marc
Sounds like anybody living in Indiana, not just Ellsworth’s district, should give his office a call and tell him to PTDB.
demo woman
@Steaming Pile: I haven’t heard a peep out of the repubs either.
4tehlulz
@Steaming Pile:
@demo woman:
Shhhh….Remember when Lieberman heard about progressive support for expanding Medicare? Let’s not have history repeat itself here…..
Koz
Or not.
Michael
As a Hoosier, I’m not terribly worried about Ellsworth. Keep in mind, he already voted for the House bill…
DanF
@Zifnab: What is this mysterious “Indiana Democratic political machine” of which you speak? From where I’m sitting in south-central Indiana, I have yet to see this mythical beast. It sure doesn’t show up for state-wide contests.
Catsy
Remember these names. If HCR fails, they get not one dime, not one phone bank, not a single minute of volunteer effort–and any primary opponents get full-spirited support. Make them unelectable ever again in the Democratic Party.
feebog
Interesting segment on Rachel Maddow last night addressing this issue. She pointed out that all these names are speculation. Sutpak keeps saying he has up to 12 congress critters in his corner, but he never names them. Moreover, Rachel pointed out that when Stupak started this end run he was claiming the number was 20 to 25.
Rachel quoted an anonymous senior aide who said the number Stupak can count on is more like 4 or 5. And I’m willing to bet that number drops as crunch time approaches. All that being said, if you live in a district represented by one of those named above, get on the phone and tell them in no uncertain terms that you want them to voite for HCR and the follow up reconcilliation bill.
Tim I
We don’t have much of a bench in Indiana. Joe Donnelly, who is also part of the Stupak posse is one of the few alternatives to Ellsworth.
But look at the bright side, the Republicans are very likely to win this seat, so you would get Ellsworth out of Congress. Although you might get a Republican in his place.
Zifnab
@DanF: With no Dem primary (due to Bayh’s last minute resignation), the Indiana Democratic Party just gets to pick whatever warm-blooded umpa lompa it wants to take the Dem slot on the ticket.
So “Dem Indiana Political Machine” = “Guys that pick the nominee”. Alternately, “whomever was in charge of getting Evan Bayh his Senate seat to begin with”.
SadOldVet
Three months ago, all of the progressives in the state of Indiana were invited to a meeting to discuss “The Bayh Problem”. When we met two months ago, it was the consensus opinion, of the 17 of the 29 of us progressives in the state that did make it to the meeting, that Evan Bayh should commit suicide. However, we were unable to get anyone to volunteer to assist him.
The Indiana State Democratic Party Central Committee is composed of a bunch of Bayh-like DLC/Dino/Rethug-Lite types who cannot understand why the state’s voters keep selecting real rethugnicans over the pseudo-rethugs that the dumbocrat party nominates. As is normal for such rethug-lites, they are more worried about upsetting republicans than they are of pleasing actual democrats.
What would be wonderful (but won’t happen) would be if they would ask John Mellancamp to run for the senate. Of course, Mellancamp MUST BE UNELECTABLE as he has shown thru actions that he cares for working people!
mcc
Actually, I’ve found that bit interesting for a different reason.
Ellsworth supported the Stupak amendment. But he also was the author of the original Stupak amendment, sort of– before we started hearing about Stupak, Ellsworth was the broker of the compromise that the House bill was going to contain. Then Stupak broke off, rejected the compromise and got his language inserted instead. Ellsworth’s amendment, because it was rejected, was never made public, but from all reports I saw, Ellsworth’s amendment was almost identical to the Senate language. For him to reject that new language now would be bizarre.
Also note, Ellsworth isn’t “running” to replace Bayh, strictly speaking– because of the stupid way Bayh quit, there will be no primary and Ellsworth will be simply appointed to be the nominee by the democratic party in indiana. If the democratic party can’t get leverage out of Ellsworth based on this enormous, unearned gift they’re about to give him, I am at a loss. Why is Ellsworth not out there trying to sell his original compromise language to the other anti-choice dems?
John
Indiana, as I understand it, is a fairly Republican state (until Obama narrowly won in 2008, it hadn’t picked a Democrat for president since 1964), but yet has a rather popular Democratic senator and 5 out of 9 Democratic congressmen. It also had Democratic governors for quite a while in the 90s and early 00s. The pseudo-rethugs that the dumbocrat party nominates seem to be doing fairly well.
Beyond that, yeah to JC’s original post. In the first place, Ellsworth already voted for health care reform. If he thinks that voting against it now is going to get him any votes, he’s deceiving himself. I suppose there’s some hard core pro-lifers who are currently with him but might abandon him if he votes for a bill with the Senate abortion language. But surely there’s at least as many Democrats who will be very unhappy with a vote to kill health care reform. Even beyond the fund-raising issues that voting to kill health care reform will have, how on earth does Ellsworth think he’s going to be able to drum up any of the base turnout in Indianapolis and the Chicago suburbs that he’d need to win if he votes against the bill?
To get re-elected in his conservative southern Indiana district, it might make sense to switch his vote over the abortion issue. I don’t think it makes any sense in a statewide context. Even in Indiana, you still need good turnout from the actual Democratic parts of the state to win, and it’s hard to see how you get that by helping kill health care.
jron
Voting against HCR is ingenious for Democrats.
Since no Republicans would ever consider voting for them, their vote against reform will ensure no Democrats do either. This will allow the non-vote of the Republican to be cancelled out by the non-vote of the Democrat, ensuring an easy victory.
It’s all basic physics or something, which is rarely used in elections.
JenJen
I’m surprised that the MoveOn Member Survey on HCR ended up being an 83%-17% landslide in favor of supporting the final health care bill.
Encouraging, and I’m looking forward to MoveOn putting their/our money behind this effort in full-force now.
Remember November
Marion “crack addict” Berry? what a frickin joke.
mcc
@JenJen: Really? I don’t think I’m that surprised.
I don’t think the blogs are as representative of the wider movement as they’d like to think.
Origuy
@Remember November: Different Marion Berry. The Democratic Representative from Arkansas, not Marion Barry, the former D.C. mayor.
deadrody
Hhmmm… just spitballing here… Maybe because the agree with him ? A lot of people do. You might want to look into it.
And think about it. In places like San Fran its about 80% hardcore liberals, and yet, AT BEST HCR polls at a little below 50%. Meaning somewhere there are a bunch of people opposed to HCR. A few might be in Indiana even!