I’m wondering who will be the historian to chronicle the ups and downs and ins and outs of the roller coaster ride that was health care reform the past year and a half. One thing that I think has to be mentioned is the role of blogs. As Tim has noted before, McJoan and the front pagers at DKOS and DDay and Jon Walker at FDL basically wrote the path for the House months ago, passing the Senate bill with an immediate reconciliation fix, long before I heard anything coming from the House or in the MSM.
I think that is a pretty big deal.
Comrade Jake
My vote would be for Fallows.
beltane
Well, we sure got to see who’s been naughty and who’s been nice.
taylormattd
Actually, most, if not all of those people you listed angrily demanded that the bill be fixed before the House approved the Senate Bill.
jrg
Everything I know about the HCR bill I learned from the internet. Everything. I learned nothing from the TV news.
I hope that history labels cable news as the useless pile of crap that it is. No fact checking, no responsibility to the viewers, just vapid, horserace bullshit, 24/7.
media browski
Just to pat myself on the back: I called it back in August under my old dkos maimonides account. Rahm was pretty much telegraphing that’s what it would take.
mistermix
Rick Perlstein, I hope.
Comrade Jake
I’d like to also nominate Fred Barnes.
That is so full of win right now. h/t to Yglesias.
Joey Maloney
There’s lots more work to be done, but for today…I’m floating in the warm, buoyant embrace of an ocean of wingnut tears. Ahhhhhh…
mem from somerville
@taylormattd: Yeah, that’s my memory of that as well.
A post-mortem would be nice, really. What worked, what didn’t work, etc. With data. Luv data.
booferama
An important part of the narrative will be how the FDLers wrote the script, then became marginal late in the game. Now that the bill has passed the House, I think we’ll see blogs that splintered in their views start to come together in terms of potential fixes. Hell, I even see Jane Hamsher and John Cole hanging out in a dog park together.
beltane
@Comrade Jake: Repeat after me: Bwaaaaahhhhh!!!!
The only semi-sane one of the bunch is David Frum, who’s running around frantically trying to clean up the mess left by the mass wingnut head explosion.
dmsilev
Bill Kristol is reduced to quoting Karl Marx:
Semi-OT: On my epic train ride over the last few days, one of the most fascinating moments was sitting in the lounge car listening to a few people debate health care. Two Kucinich admirers and a public option supporter. By Friedman’s Law of Public Conveyances, this means that single-payer has deep and thorough support throughout the land. Or that only DFHs ride the train.
-dms
RAM
Booman didn’t do too bad a job, either.
The thing was, the corporate media and most columnists were far too interested in how badly Obama was losing at any given point in time. They showed little interest or knowledge of what was in the bill or what legislative processes actually were. Which is why I’ve just quit reading most of them. They are, for the most part, a bunch of morons paid for opinions that are usually wildly wrong. Since there is no accountability for virtually anything any more, however, they not only keep their jobs but they get promoted. If bloggers are wrong all the time, people just quit reading them, or if they jump the Norquist like Jane, readers step back a bit and say “Whoa!” and take a more gingerly approach to them. The brains of some bloggers, like Larry Johnson, short out completely and nobody much pays attention to their batshit insane rants. Hopefully, Jane takes a deep breath and shucks off the multiple personality she’s assumed and gets back to political analysis instead of hying off on her Rahm jihad.
John Cole
Let’s not also forget the quiet coup. The student loan reform went into reconciliation, too, and Jane heavily promoted that. We’ll see if it makes it through the Senate, but most of you poo-pooed it and said it was just a poison pill.
CalD
__
Well, along with pretty much everyone else with a functioning brain. That one didn’t exactly take a genius, which is good because geniuses are rare.
But you know that Overton Window everyone’s been talking about? I’m pretty sure it just moved. Obviously not as far or as fast as even the most pragmatic of us smart liberals would have liked to see, but it has finally budged. That’s progress.
Robin G
It’s going to be fascinating.
Man, watching the wingnuts this morning is even more fun than hanging out on White Sox Interactive after a Twins win.
By the way, is immigration reform next? Because if we thought HCR caused fireworks… but still, onward and upward.
beltane
@taylormattd: Yes, and that reconciliation would be used to somehow bypass the Senate bill in favor of the House bill with the public option. The way it played out was certainly not the way mcjoan and others wanted it to.
LuciaMia
In all the after-bill jibber jabber, leave it to CNN to have plenty of pointless filler. One segment had three ‘independents’ giving their opinion….about basically nothing. One fool even had the nerve to go one about how he was disappointed that there wasn’t more ‘reaching out to republicans.’ ‘Scuse me??? After more than a year of Republicans telling the Dem’s to eat shit and die, exactly what ‘reaching out’ were you thinking of?
Linda Featheringill
YES, WE DID!
YES, WE DID!
YES, WE DID!
YES, WE DID!
Damn! It feels tood to win one!
That is all.
beltane
@RAM: Booman was remarkably clear-headed about the whole process. So was Al Girdano and, may I say, Andrew Sullivan.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@John Cole: “We’ll see if it makes it through the Senate…”
Famous last words.
ericblair
@jrg: Everything I know about the HCR bill I learned from the internet. Everything. I learned nothing from the TV news.
Amen. With only 168 hours a week to fill, we just can’t expect them to shoehorn in five minutes to tell people what the fuck is actually going on.
I’ve already heard a bunch of praise to the brave souls who voted for this bill, knowing they are going to certain political death. Ahem. The only reason this bill was ever unpopular was because Our Liberal Media couldn’t stop parroting wingnut revenge fantasies about the thing. This will be the new third rail of politics.
Jean
Thanks to everyone on this blog who encouraged us all to write, to call, repeat, repeat. I held my nose and even called Cantor. I was basking in the win and reading the headlines this morning. Right under the Banner headline is another proclaiming that “before the ink is dry,” Cuccinelli will sue the Fed because the mandate, he believes, is unconstitutional. I hadn’t thought there was much of a chance of winning that battle, but given the make-up of the Supreme Court, is there any chance the states could win that suit?
stuckinred
FDL has a way to go before they get together with anyone. There are some great people there but there are also some hardcore haters.
Zhirem
Hey! …
…
There’s some bellybutton fluff in there!
> get fluff from bellybutton
You get the bellybutton lint from your bellybutton.
> INVENTORY:
You are carrying:
A piece of bellybutton lint.
>
…
(sorry, could not resist. Strange morning, but good coffee…)
– Zhirem
JCT
This is one of my favorites. From now on I think the only “reaching out” should be done with a pitchfork.
LuciaMia
Oh, and looked out the window this morning when I got up, and looks like the country is still here. Did all our freedoms die yet? Is Rush on his private jet to Costa Rico? (Pleez, pleez, pleez…)
taylormattd
@booferama: Don’t kid yourself: Jane Hamsher loathes Obama. IMO, that’s been clear since a year before his election, and as such, she will vehemently oppose anything she perceives as supported by him.
me
@Zhirem:
>Pass bill though Senate
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
ericblair
@Jean: I hadn’t thought there was much of a chance of winning that battle, but given the make-up of the Supreme Court, is there any chance the states could win that suit?
I’m not an expert, but someone somewhere on Teh Intertoobz (the absolute acme of sourcing) pointed out that Shrub had signed regulations to federally mandate health insurance for children as a part of child support orders. (Apparently, this is 45 CFR 303.30 and 303.31). Miraculously, this seems to have escaped ire of our completely nonpartisan and scrupulously fair howler monkeys of the press to this point.
Honus
I see where Ken Cuccinelli is going to waste a bunch of Virginia’s money on a constitutional challenge the the HCR bill. That’s good; we just cut several hundred million from the public schools, so there should be plenty of funding for Ken’s vanity lawsuit.
taylormattd
@John Cole: There we a lot of people who loved the idea of putting the student loan provision in the bill.
But let’s not pretend Jane really gave two shits about it. If that was the case, why did she continue to join with teabaggers to try and kill the bill?
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@taylormattd:
Obama not nuking Lieberman’s chairmanship/committee assignments pretty much sealed Calamity Jane’s hate for Obama in stone.
Maybe she needs to photoshop Obama in whiteface? Oh, right… the teabaggers already did that.
Zhirem
@me:
Sweet. At least one other person got it. I can’t be the only kid raised on Infocom…
;)
– Zhirem
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@LuciaMia:
I think five or six Democrats should’ve switched parties prior to the vote, voted for it as Republicans, and then switched back.
Would that have shut these idiots up, by giving the whole thing a veneer of bipartisanship?
BethanyAnne
Watching the progress, death, and rebirth of this bill has kept me thinking about a scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNaXdLWt17A
Robin G
@BethanyAnne: Brilliant and perfect. I envy your ability to make these connections so early in the morning.
eemom
@taylormattd:
Why anyone with any sense continues to defend Jane Hamsher is just beyond my comprehension.
Unless it’s that she gets a break because she’s an attractive woman that she wouldn’t get if she looked like, say, Dennis Kucinich. And that’s just kind of revolting.
dmsilev
Speaking of post-mortems and exploding heads, I’d advise people to head one thread up (the one with the “Chill the Fuck Out” photo) to watch another BTD meltdown now in progress.
-dms
CalD
@Zhirem: Leather Goddesses of Phobos?
Violet
@jrg:
This. Cable news is a waste of time.
CalD
@eemom: Yeah. I frankly think she does a lot more harm than good to the progressive cause. But I’d definitely do her.
Dr. Loveless
@Robin G:
I believe it is. As I told a friend on Facebook last night, once immigration reform passes Obama can save even more money on HCR by shipping all the old folks condemned by the death panels to sacrificial temples in the newly created People’s Republic of Aztlan. Win-win for everybody!
eemom
@CalD:
at least you’re honest. : )
dmsilev
@Dr. Loveless: Makes sense. What with global warming, there’s a distinct shortage of ice floes these days.
-dms
daryljfontaine
@Robin G:
Jobs, I would think.
Time to drive home to Chicago from KCMO. Been a fun weekend what with the six inches of snow on Saturday and all.
D
burnspbesq
Chait gets in some post-game woofing, complete with photo of Hayley Mills as Pollyanna.
http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-chait/health-care-pollyanna-memories
Ash Wing League
Well I for one can’t wait to see how those new Texas history textbooks summarize these events!
comrade scott's agenda of rage
Hamsher is all about Hamsher. Period. As soon as the 8.9 people left on the left who still think she’s worth supporting realize that, she’ll crawl back under the rock from whence she sprang and make no utterances for the remainder of her days.
I’m voting for mcjoan at the GOS. I have such an internet crush on her but please, don’t tell my wife.
Viva BrisVegas
Along with the post mortem goes the inevitable discussion of the movie version. Here’s my casting:
Barack Obama – Will Smith (sorry but Morgan Freeman is too old and Denzel not good looking enough).
Nancy Pelosi – Susan Sarandon (or Angelina Jolie, it depends on the nude sceen).
Harry Reid – a mop in a bucket.
John Boehner – any generic white guy with a fake tan.
Sarah Palin – Sarah Palin (natch).
Glenn Beck – that guy who sells shamwows on TV.
Rahm Emmanuel – Jeremy Pivin.
Rush Limbaugh – Tilikum (if available).
Tea Party protesters – the Orcs of Isengard.
Rep. George Radanovich – a pile of horse dung.
Bart Stupak – Pope Gregory XIII.
Senators Snowe and Collins – Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen.
Eric Massa – Andy Dick.
Extras – the Balloon Juice community.
Remember, there are no small parts, especially if you are playing Rahm Emmanuel.
BethanyAnne
@Robin G: hehe, ty
ally
[longtime reader] – Yep – I learned and was incredibly motivated to write, call, email for this bill thanks to these many blog sites including here. And I’m glad that you gave kudos to Jane and FDL for the Student Loan Reform push in the Reconciliation bill – it was the first place that I saw push it – and it motivated many college students and young adults to call Congress repeatedly.
Good job from all – now we need to motivate that wishy-washy Senate – and then Really Celebrate!
DougJ
If you really mean historian, this won’t happen for at least ten years or so. So my money is on Luke Kearns Goodwin or maybe Liz Beschloss.
Linda Featheringill
Seriously – what did work and what did not work?
I would like to read a compilation of thoughts from you guys. In some format or another. It might be quite instructional.
Jim
You’ll notice how passive aggressive Hamsher is now. All of her anti-mandate posts are framed as “Will Republicans do x and y?” or “Oh man, Pence is going to hit a home run with these talkings points.” Even the FireDogLake crew has no intention of actively participating in the bill’s repeal–feeling content to merely give cover to GOP lunatic talking points instead–pretty much proving how utterly disingenuous they were by claiming that no bill was better than this bill.
BethanyAnne
@Ash Wing League: ha!
Corner Stone
@Viva BrisVegas:
***SPUTTER***
mumble mumble…{incoherent babbling}…
BrklynLibrul
Let’s not forget Steve Benen and Pass. The. Damn. Bill.
Corner Stone
I don’t know about historian, but this needs to be done sooner rather than later. The longer it waits, the further the meme will seperate from the reality of it.
If it happens in 10 years or so as DougJ suggests you can bet the farm on the slant the “history” will take.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
Dems stumbled and groped, but they learned to do what is often necessary in politics. To face their fears and harness them into motivation to get the job done. Kudos to our dem CC’ers. We often scorn them, but not this time.
Zhirem
@CalD: HHGttG
Svensker
@Zhirem:
That gave me such a jones for a good Zork game. Unfortunately, I’ve already sold all o’ mine on ebay…
Joseph Nobles
The first major book I’m going to buy on this period of time will be Ezra’s. If he doesn’t make this his first book, he’ll miss the opportunity of a lifetime.
Plus, sorting through all of his own blogs (and that of others) will only make him a even better reporter and writer. “I smell a Pulitzer” for real.
Dr. Loveless
I forgot to mention:
Lou Dobbs goes first.
IronyAbounds
The supply-sider drones at CNBC this morning are simply baffled by the fact that the market is up today. Kudlow looks like he is passing a kidney stone during the broadcast.
Paul in KY
Could a fellow poster more versed in teh internets than I please get me a link to our Balloon Juice March Madness group?
I would like to see how badly I’m being whupped.
Thanks!
Sly
Depends on when it is being written and what the audience is. Decades from now, no one will give a shit about the procedural details of its passage, just like with Social Security or Medicare. No one gives a shit that COBRA was passed via reconciliation, and the word is in the damn title: Combined Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act. No one cares, and very few people are even aware of the fact, that the Civil Rights Act was only passed because of legislative compromises.
Does a conversation about the value of the CRA revolve around the House adopting a compromise made in the Senate by Everett Dirksen and Mike Mansfield that was designed to break the Southern Bloc’s filibuster? Of course not. The common history is a bare bones history. There’s not going to be a conversation, years from now, involving the phrases “deem and pass” or “motion to recommit”. The conversation will be about how the legislation shaped the system and whether or not it is necessary/possible to reform it.
NobodySpecial
I thought this was a battle about tactics.
Sly
@IronyAbounds:
A lot of businesses just found out what their health benefits structure is going to look like for the foreseeable future after more than a year of uncertainty. Of course the market is going to be up. The people at CNBC are just morons.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Paul in KY: Here ya go
Anton Sirius
@daryljfontaine:
They can do both over the next seven months or so. Some kind of movement on immigration reform would be a huge boost for November’s GOTV efforts.
kay
@Joseph Nobles:
I felt sorry for him last night. He has such a cohesive understanding of how one part fits with the other and makes a whole, and he has to share time with people who won’t look at the whole.
I could see the impatience on his face. He hasn’t been able to force people to look at this as a mechanism with interlocking parts, and that’s the only way to understand it.
Paul in KY
Thank’s, General! Hopefully a salve for my ineptitude will be UK in Final Four (first beat the eggheads, then hopefully another beating of WVU).
Little Dreamer
@ericblair:
Will be? Did I happen to step into a time machine and you all missed the insanity I’ve been observing?
maus
@Viva BrisVegas:
I’d be up with this before I knew Smith was a Scientologist trying to push Hubbard’s teachings to schoolchildren. Freedom, independence, and the American Way doesn’t go well with those creepy dudes :(
Dr. Squid
I would like to take credit for all this as I created this weird confluence of something-or-other by spending Saturday night in Morgantown.
Little Dreamer
@Dr. Squid:
Had we known what the result would be, we would have suggested you do this ages ago.
;)
Elie
John, if you want to keep the medical analogy going, I would re-name this process Grand Rounds for Health Care Reformrather than a “Post Mortem” – which is about what went wrong that resulted in a death.
This was a totally positive outcome and its important to highlight THAT in my opinion, despite the fact that at different points there were challenges and set backs…
At lot of things went right…
Dr. Squid
@Little Dreamer:
If I get this job that I interviewed for in Pittsburgh last week, think of the vortex of goof that will be created on Backyard Brawl weekend.
RAM
@Sly:
The publishers of the small weekly newspaper chain from whence I retired a couple years ago ought to be extremely happy this morning. Health insurance has been absolutely killing them. The past few years they’ve had a couple of employee spouses afflicted with cancer and some other very expensive illnesses. They’ve always done right by their people, but the costs have been escalating at an outrageous rate.
In fact, I think I might hit them up for another retirement party now that their health insurance expenses will go down. The first one was a hoot.
Little Dreamer
@Dr. Squid:
I think you are referring to a sporting event, and I have to tell you, I’m not much on sports (don’t bring this up to TZ, he doesn’t talk about it, but I know it bothers him) – but whatever you are referring to, I think it sounds like something good and I can only hope that it will be totally teh awesome!
LD (sports impaired)
rikyrah
No, I don’t think so.
You need a strong character actor – Harry Lennix.
Denzel….not good looking enough?
you’re lucky I’m in a good mood today.
Mwangangi
@Dr. Loveless: ah yes… I’m still waiting for the first wave of goblinization ( or is that the teabaggers?).
maus
@Elie:
While that may be, it’s commonly used in tech when a project or large task completes and one can carefully break down what went wrong, what went right. It’s not always offensive or a sign of failure, there are plenty of positive things to take out of a post-mortem.
Mahakali Overdrive
I cannot decide if this post is snark… or not… ?
Elise
You do know that mcjoan and everyone you mentioned insisted that the bill had to be fixed before it could be passed and that there were NO votes in the House to pass the Senate bill unless the Senate acted FIRST to pass reconciliation, right?
These folks spent the last few months on DKos and elsewhere screaming “FIX IT and pass it” as if that was the only way possible and now they’re pretending like they said pass it and fix it all along because that’s what happened.
I don’t like revisionist history. Credit should go where it’s due – and it isn’t due to mcjoan or Waldman or Kos or Hamsher or half a dozen other people in the netroots who demanded everything happen their way.
plaindave
Jane will come back when she stops grieving for Kobe. I hope it’s soon.
Terrapin Station84
Whoa, John. Massive disagreement between you and me here. And normally I agree with you on just about everything.
Dkos front-pagers and FDL did *NOT* help to push the sidecar reconciliation strategy. Often, they actively fought against it (“we don’t trust the Senate to act”, “we should just kill the bill”, “no public option, no bill”).
No. It was the work of *PRAGMATIC PROGRESSIVES* (such as the ones that regularly visit this blog) that pushed that strategy(the one that said pass the damn bill, i.e., pass the Senate Bill through the damned House and then try for sidecar legislation).
Let us be clear. I remember what *I* thought (and I saw the same sentiment being pushed by many other pragmatic progressives at the time and ever since) the *day* after Scott Brown won Massachusetts. I thought “uh-oh. We’d better get the House to pass the damned Senate bill. NOW.” There was massive amounts of push-back against that idea from frontpagers at Dkos and FDL.
If House members had listened to the stupidity being pushed at Dkos and FDL we would *NOT* be celebrating an HCR victory right now. Let us please not forget that.