EJ Dionne notices something:
Chuck Todd of NBC made a superb point on “Hardball” last night that everyone should pay attention to. He noted that absolutely no one is proposing to pass a health-care bill under the “reconciliation process,” that is, with a majority rather than 60 votes in the Senate.
Does that surprise you? Chuck’s point is that the health care bill already passed the Senate with 60 votes last December.
Welcome to the party, EJ. That won’t stop your idiot colleagues from repeating the GOP talking points about this “unprecedented” use of reconciliation “jam” this down our throats. I fully expect half the editorials at your own paper to advance that nonsense.
And you won’t say anything to refute them, despite having some pretty nice editorial real estate. Those sorts of confrontations just don’t happen in the Village.
asiangrrlMN
It wouldn’t be civilized, Cole. Unlike, say, simply making shit up and spreading it around willy-nilly with the aid of the gleeful press.
bcinaz
Todd also said something really stupid – he said that we all (I assume he meant everybody riding around on McCain’s bus) assumed McCain and Obama would be best buds and work together on all kinds of stuff.
KCinDC
Was that what the Harry Reid comment that confused Josh Marshall was about?
John Cole
@bcinaz: They just can’t come to grips with the fact that McCain is a bitter asshole.
David Hunt
Just like Lieberman supported Obama in his presidential run to show his gratitude for Obama campaigning for Joe in 2006.
Oh, wait…
mr. whipple
@John Cole:
How can they? They’re best buds, they’ve ridden the tire swing, and John is on their shows at the drop of a hat.
Mike Kay
@bcinaz:
that was odd because when has McCain ever gotten along with anyone?
Frankly, I was surprised the leadership brought him along to the summit. They all hate him, and he stinks when he’s reading talking points.
asiangrrlMN
@John Cole: Don’t forget a jerk with an overweening sense of self-importance and entitlement who thought he was owed the presidency.
bayville
Can’t get nuttin by ol’ EJ.
Next week, he’ll notice there aint no such thing as a death panel in HCR.
KCinDC
OT, but I’m surprised Grover Norquist’s Muslim wife hasn’t caused him more problems with the wackos “clash of civilizations” folks on the right. In any case, Pamela Geller is laying into him now.:
Also:
Short Bus Bully
He noted that absolutely no one is proposing to pass a health-care bill under the “reconciliation process,” that is, with a majority rather than 60 votes in the Senate… Chuck’s point is that the health care bill already passed the Senate with 60 votes last December.
Shhhh, don’t tell the Dems. They might get a talking point out of the deal.
/giggle
KCinDC
@Mike Kay, I assume the Republicans brought McCain along because they knew the media were still in love with the guy and would happily play and replay anything negative he said about Obama or health care reform.
Mike Kay
@KCinDC:
Ironically, it’s an open secret in Washington that Grover’s wife is a beard.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=TDU&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&q=grover+norquist+gay&aq=f&aqi=&aql=f&oq=
Pangloss
@KCinDC: You know who else wants to drown American government in a bathtub? Terrorists.
dmsilev
@bcinaz, @John Cole: My theory is that McCain’s special BBQ rub has some fairly potent and fairly illegal pharmaceuticals in the ingredient list.
-dms
Violet
Well of course he won’t. He might raise a ruckus and then someone would notice him. Can’t have that happen.
Zifnab
This is why the netroots are the place to go for information on damn near anything political related. Say what you will about DKos Diaries or FDL Firebaggers or any of the other Jane Hampheres of the Left, but if you want to know what the state of play is on any political item, going to Hardball or Wolf Blitzer or (heaven forbid) Fox’n’Friends is a lost cause.
The Kossacks practically wrote game plan on passing the current health care bill with reconciliation. McJoan and Meteor Blades and the like were researching this shit before Massachusetts officially went wingnut for Senate.
No one has been more informed and more aggressive at spreading inside baseball political rules and tools than the netroots over the last eight years.
Bill Arnold
Jebus. I agree with Pamela Geller, at least out of context.
dmsilev
@asiangrrlMN: Obama sticking a knife in McCain’s chest and twisting it by reminding McCain that he lost made listening to the whole thing worth while.
-dms
SpotWeld
The one big lesson that the GOP was supposed to learn from Rove was “take you opposition’s strength and turn it into thier weakness”.
And now I’m puzzled. Why is the GOP working so hard to stop this Health Care Reform? If they learned anything they should be trying to have thier cake and eat it too.
Put up a token resistance to the Health Care Bill.
Keep tabs on anything negative that happens (and since there is no such thing as a perfect Health Care Bill there will be some negative effects.)
Come Nov take credit for “working hard for the Real Americans” while smearing the Dems for everything “bad” that is even tangentially related to Health Care.
It’ll be pretty much the same tack they’re taking for the economic recovery, why are they too disorganized not to follow the same path for Health Care?
(I’m starting to think some of the cracks in the GOP that the Tea Partiers are exploiting are major fissures that’ll split the Republicans down the middle within the next 5 years.)
Dr. I. F. Stone
Don’t be absurd! The Dems have a hope that the reconciliation process can be used as a basis for effectively “amending” the already-passed Senate bill IF and WHEN the House approves the bill in the exact form passed by the Senate. The “amendments” could potentially be passed with only a majority of Senators (and of the House members) and when applied against the prior bill approved by both the Senate AND the House would then represent the final bill that Obama could sign. Todd was being extraordinarily disingenuous.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
Reconciliation is being used to jam something down the throats of Nelson and Lieberman. Not that this will get any traction amongst the binary thinkers in our press corps.
kay
I know it’s a GOP talking point, and I know pundits care (those two things, weirdly, seem to be connected) but does anyone in the real world care how they pass this bill?
Even given the Republican-pundit propensity for never shutting up, how long can they talk about this?
It merits a paragraph, at most, and there’s only so many times even the windiest pundit can repeat that paragraph.
It just doesn’t have any staying power as a subject.
It’s 51. There’s not much more to say about that.
Since we’re already closing out Week One of the bullshit reconciliation outrage, I think it’s already run it’s course.
Zifnab
@SpotWeld: The health care bill isn’t going to be cheap. And implementing it will cement a large entitlement into the federal budget.
Take a look at the rest of the first world countries and their budgets and compare them to ours. Germany, France, Britian, Japan – each of these countries sinks a fortune into health care. All that money flowing into social services makes operating a massive and expensive military prohibitively expensive. And good luck telling your citizens, “Sorry we can’t afford to keep your brother / mother / child on chemo or in dialysis because we’ve got to bomb brown people in Waka-waka-stan.”
The federal budget in the United States is absolutely dominated by three things – Social Security, Medicare / Medicaid, and Defense. Any increase in one is, by necessity, going to have to come out of the other. If we pass universal health care, it’s going to be that much harder to find another trillion dollars for the next Republican President’s middle eastern adventure.
This is also a central reason behind Republican opposition to Green Energy. God forbid we stop needing to own half the Middle East to fill up our gas tanks. Why will we keep needing to buy $2 billion / pop jets and helicopters?
Violet
@kay:
If the bill passes, in a very short amount of time no one will even remember the details of how it passed. Everyone will be busy talking about what it means for them.
Joshua Norton
They should write up the motion to pass the bill like a legal brief, only instead of using case law citations, cite the times the Repiggies did the exact same thing when they were running the show. They can then base their actions on precedents already set.
Unless you smack the press in the face with the facts they’re going to act like the political world didn’t exist before the alarm clock went off this morning.
asiangrrlMN
@dmsilev: All with that cool, unruffled demeanor of his. I’m working to be like Obama and just CTFO.
Elisabeth
@KCinDC:
Smirky John made Obama “uncomfortable about ‘unsavory’ deals.” I’d say pissed off at the stupidity. myself.
http://tpmtv.talkingpointsmemo.com/?id=4881355&ref=fpc
(edit: And he gets to go on and on during MTP. Oy.)
mcc
This will be something very easy for the Democrats to spin if they just try.
What I kinda wish they’d do is say that they want to use reconciliation to “remove the Ben Nelson kickback”. :P
General Egali Tarian Stuck
Meanwhile, back at the ranch Senator Daffy Duck (Ratfucker, NE) is looking for a clue.
Somebody in the dem caucus either fit this fool with a muzzle, or tune him into the fact that using reconciliation is to do small fixes to a bill the Senate already passed, therefore not necessary to pass comprehensive HCR via that majority vote maneuver. Somebody primary this asshole, puhleeeas,. And then there is this preceding quote
Yea, right, sure he will vote yea. Currently is voting with the wingnuts on every fucking vote that comes before the senate. Lies of a Concern troll from Hell.
kay
@Violet:
I agree. Remember how this “debate” started?
The media could not stay on topic at the first health care press event. They asked about GATES, and then spent three weeks on that. They’re not exactly focused on the subject at hand.
A woman who works with me said I should be glad the bill didn’t pass yet because “the idiots” would be pointing to the rate increases in California and claiming they were the result of the health care bill.
She’s right, too.
Can’t you just SEE that headline?
“Rate Increases in California: did health care bill fulfill promise to lower costs?”
Then they’d quote some wingnut hack and put him up against a neutral expert, and they’d determine the jury was still out.
loretta
I haven’t done the research, yet, but it would be interesting to see how long the previous congress (in 2001) took to pass The Patriot Act, how long was the debate, and did anyone ask for a blank sheet of paper. Similarly, how long did it take to get Congress to approve of funding the invasion of Afghanistan, then Iraq, then Medicare Part D. We know they used reconciliation to pass the massive tax cuts for the upper class.
Also….never mind that the Bush administration introduced the biggest, most behemoth and redundant agency into existence: Homeland Security.
This mass amnesia among the MSM is really amazing.
Elisabeth
@kay:
I read over at TPM yesterday that the press pool was groaning when Obama said he wanted a bit more time to wrap the summit up. Apparently, the press pool was “bored.”
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Dr. I. F. Stone: George Miller addressed this this morning, and said the House is prepared to go first, if need be. Try again poseur.
kay
@Elisabeth:
Ezra Klein wrote something yesterday to the effect that this forum was for media. He didn’t mean “for media” in the sense that people would watch tv and see it, he meant “for media”, as in media people.
Obama and the Democrats have to convince them? Of what? That’s it’s important? That it’s a good bill? Why are they the arbiters and the audience? Did we really just spend a whole day courting them?
I appreciate Klein’s honesty, but WTF is that?
Citizen Alan
In E.J.’s defense, economic times are tough, and he probably doesn’t want to get shit-canned in a bad economy like Froomkin did when he insisted on telling the truth about something.
Tecumseh
In the ten minutes that I watched CNN, they discussed reconciliation and not one person– not David Gergen, not the token liberal who wasn’t asked a question, not the host, not even the special reporter who came out to push the buttons on some screen to describe reconciliation got any of it right. They all just talked about the entire thing being passed through reconciliation. I mean, you’re a fracking cable news channel that’s supposed to be the only reliable one and you can’t even get the news part of it right. I could have laid out the entire policy and procedure better than any of them.
@Joshua Norton: You can smack the press with as much facts as you want but until you get about twenty people shouting those facts loudly on TV, you still won’t get the press to notice. And the press still won’t say it’s the truth but will pull the “some say….” trick.
Midnight Marauder
@Dr. I. F. Stone:
And you wouldn’t know anything about that, now would you, Mr. Joe Klein?
KCinDC
@kay, the media are the audience because very, very few people watched this summit themselves (or could watch it). What the public is going to learn about it is only what the media decide to show them, together with the spin the media put on what they’re showing. Obama did a great job, but if most people never see that but only see selected clips and hear Todd and Brooks and whoever else going on about how well prepared the Republicans were and how fabulous Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan were, then it doesn’t do us much good.
cat48
@Tecumseh:
Unfortunately, I saw a segment similar to that without Gergen on CNN. It had Carville and Erickson arguing about it and they both misinformed the public. Carville said he thought that reconciliation had been used at least 8 or 9 times (it’s 22x) . Them Eric says it is unconstitutional of course and Carville had to inform him it the filibuster was not in the constitution and on an on it went.
Unfortunately for me, it just made me livid so I went on a twitter rant with every CNN person on twitter. I had read a long, informative article at Brookings, an editorial at WP accusing the the repugs of hypocrisy, and an article at NPR about how healthcare was not new to reconciliation. They all got links to all 3 articles and msgs like STOP MISINFORMn CNN SEE LINK….took a wasted 2 1/2 hrs until I calmed down.
Curiously, no one blocked me. I doubt they bothered to ck out link either.
If they don’t pass HC soon, I fear I will be committed. Fortunately, I have HC.
kay
@KCinDC:
I’m discouraged.
I’ve been thinking that this is the second time I’ve been through this, watching a talented politician-President try to get reform through what amounts to a media anti-reform juggernaut.
Bill Clinton was pretty good at this politics game, whatever else he was or wasn’t, and Obama’s good at it, too.
If those two couldn’t do it, I don’t know who can.
You know, nobody but the top 5% made any gains in the Bush Years, and that got zero attention until Wall Street imploded and people at the top got scared. It was all happy talk and warmongering until the bottom fell out.
Maybe that has to happen here. Health care has to crash.
Mnemosyne
@Zifnab:
Sorry, I just had to snorfle at the idea that we had enough money to pay for the last Republican president’s middle eastern adventure. Bush decided to put it on the national credit card and let his grandkids pay it for him.
Carry on.
burnspbesq
@KCinDC:
Grover Norquist is a dick – but not for that reason.
Elisabeth
@kay:
When you think about it, getting any kind of health care reform through with the media and the Republicans (is that redundent?) fighting so hard against it will be a miracle.
Nellcote
@KCinDC:
Josh is confused because he clipped off the end of the quote.
kay
@Elisabeth:
The opening statement by the Republican included a claim that “millions of people” wil pay higher premiums.
It’s technically true, so it won’t be corrected.
You know what he meant? He meant that millions of people who are currently uninsured would be buying health insurance. They’ll be paying higher premiums because they didn’t have access to any policy before, so spent nothing on premiums.
That’s what we’re up against. Those kind of “principled” arguments. You really wanna just pack it in.
MTiffany
If Friedman is the Mustache of Understanding, then I guess that makes Chuck Todd the Beard of Fatuousness.
licensed to kill time
leaving a comment here to see if it will fix the html buttons but I don’t have much hope for that o_O ACK!
raptusregaliter
The day Chuck Todd makes a “superb” point is the day I make a donation to Sarah Palin.