Which Split?

How can we characterize the split among liberals over whether to support a Liebermaned health care bill? 

Henry Farrell has an interesting post up at the Monkey Cage describing it as a division between the "netroots" and the "wonkoshpere."  That matches what Greg Sargent said on Tuesday, calling it wonks vs. operatives, and what Steve Benin said the same day, only he called it wonks vs. activists.  Myself, I like Bruce Reed's name for it: wonks vs. hacks.

Henry notes that a network perspective is helpful in understanding how this works:

I would bet large amounts of money that a network analysis of the larger blogs of the left blogosphere would show:
(1) That there are cliques (in the network theory sense of the term - in this context groups of bloggers that link to each other much more often than to bloggers outside the group) within the left-leaning blogosphere that can roughly be identified as ‘netroots’ and ‘wonkosphere.’
(2) That bloggers in the netroots clique are much more likely to be opposed to the health bill in its current form than to support it.
(3) That bloggers in the wonkosphere clique are much more likely to support the health care bill in its current form than to oppose it.

And he suspects that the way that the split plays out is that:

Bloggers who associate with each other may tend to influence each other, and hence become more like each other over time in dispositions, political beliefs etc. Cass Sunstein notably argues that this is a bad thing — but it is also arguably an enabling condition for collective action under many circumstances.

I think that's all true, but I also think there's more than one split at work here.   Another split discussed in the political parties literature is between purists and pragmatists (also called amateurs vs. professionals -- the originators of the terms are Aaron Wildavsky and James Q. Wilson).  The former are not employed in politics -- they do it in their spare time -- and the rewards they get from politics are, basically, that it makes them feel good to advocate for politics they believe are good.  The latter expect more tangible rewards from politics, either jobs with the party or in government when the party wins, or through their party, when in power, steering benefits to affiliated interest groups.  My feeling is that Wildavsky and Wilson captured a real split, but that it can be caused by disposition, not just incentives.  Some of us are simply more likely to think long run and others more likely to think short run; some amateurs may be more pragmatic than purist by inclination.  What does strike me as worth investigating are the material incentives for the various people involved in party networks, whether it's the wonks or the hacks, the insiders or the outsiders. 

And that's not all!  It's also possible that the split is neither of those, but is instead an honest ideological difference between left-liberals on one side, and "third way" liberals on the other.  That's what Ed Kilgore proposes.  I think there's an easy check on that (one that I haven't made, but should be easy to do): see if positions on climate change match up with "kill billers" vs. "take what we can get" types on health care.  The kill bill crowd has been complaining about the insurance companies; are they opposed to cap-and-trade, because it does not sufficiently punish energy companies?  Are they, in that case, equally suspicious of market mechanisms deployed for liberal ends, which I think Kilgore is right to see as the hallmark of Clinton-type Democrats?

Long post, and I'm afraid I don't have an answer at the end of it.  I'm very suspicious of ideological explanations, but  I wouldn't rule it out, and both of the other splits make intuitive sense to me.  Let's see...first, I would note that Henry's network explanation of how these splits work could help understand any of the three possible splits discussed here (wonks vs. hacks, purists vs. pros, old liberals vs. new liberals).   And, second, I'd say that these splits may be cross-cutting; one could be an amateur or a professional wonk, a liberal or New Democrat hack.  If that's the case, then it becomes an empirical question that should be possible to answer. 

That Midnight Cloture Vote

I watched the midnight Senate session last night...very interesting.  A couple of comments:

1.  In a recent post, I said something about, "If Harry Reid is smart, he will..."  A commenter took that as pretty funny, thinking it self-evident that Reid is not apt to do smart things.  I don't agree overall, but it is true that Reid is doing a lousy job of dramatizing GOP stalling tactics.  The Dems have a good issue, PR-wise, in the Republican filibuster of the defense appropriations bill.  Yet Reid (and Durbin) didn't do a good job of making TV-ready UC requests to vote on the bill right now.  They did make the requests, but without staging them for video.  Opportunity missed. 

2.  There was a lot of commotion when Robert Byrd wheeled in to cast his cloture vote.  Seemed to me that Byrd was saying something, but I couldn't pick up what it was on the CSPAN feed, and I haven't seen any reporting.  Anyone?

3.  All 60 Dem showed up and voted for cloture.  Then, at the last minute, three of the four GOP women stepped up to vote with the Dems.  Hutchison was presumably screwed either way; she decided better to be attacked by Rick Perry for being weak on health care (by not voting to filibuster defense spending, a fairly tenuous attack) rather than being attacked for not supporting the troops.  More interesting were the votes of the Mainers.  Snowe and Collins have been mostly sticking with the GOP on procedural and symbolic votes so far during the health care debate, including, for Snowe, votes in Senate Finance; this one was off-pattern.  Does that hint that they're getting fed up with GOP tactics?  I don't know.  Snowe sure did get a lot of time from the president yesterday.

Unions Smell Blood

This afternoon's health care news were the statements by Andy Stern of the SEIU (reported by Jonathan Cohn) and the AFL-CIO's Richard Trumka, via Chris Good.

Here's Stern:

We know we will fight. We will continue to fight for everything we know is important. We will fight to make care affordable. We will fight for real health insurance reforms. We will fight for employers to provide their employees with coverage.  And, we will fight to pay for all of it responsibly without a tax on your benefits (his emphasis).

It ain't Churchill, but it gets the point across.  The operative sentence, I'm willing to bet, is the last one (an item that also appears as one of Trumka's demands). 

It's hard to see how they don't get their way at this point.  As far as I know, no marginal Senator has the Cadillac plan tax on his or her must-have list, so this one should be attainable pretty easily by simply accepting the House funding mechanism (taxing rich folks) instead of the Senate version.  It's hard not to see that as win-win for the bill; it puts labor back in the solid support camp at a time that Obama, Reid, and Pelosi could use a little help with the left, and taxing rich people usually polls well.  The policy wonks say that the Cadillac plan tax is important, but right now the fight is to get the thing passed, not to get the details right.  And, like the public option, the Cadillac plan tax could be pushed through reconciliation in the future, whenever actual deficit reduction happens. 

I doubt if they'll bother doing it in the manager's amendment (that is, before the bill leaves the Senate), although I suppose it's possible that Democratic Senators might want to do it as a separate amendment...either way, my guess is that the Cadillac plan tax died today.

Why It Rests on One Vote

Josh Marshall was in a sarcastic mood for a while today...under the header "Things That Are Cool," he says:
It's a great situation when every member of the caucus can kill the legislation on a whim. 
Sure.  And of course the key problem is that there are exactly 60 Senators who caucus with the Democrats, and it takes 60 to get cloture in the Senate.

But you know what?  There were only 58 Democrats back in the spring, and the stimulus basically worked out the same way.  If there were 62 Democrats right now, Holy Joe and the Benator would probably be long gone on this bill, and Bayh and Lincoln and Landrieu would be holding things up.  If the Dems only had 56, then they would have long since ditched the public option and secured Nelson, Lieberman, Snowe and Collins...and they would be trying to get two of  Lugar, Voinovich, and whoever was 61st.  Or maybe they would have gone for a smaller bill designed to withstand reconciliation, and they would have lost five of the fifty-six, and be negotiating with #49, 50, and 51. 

And here's the thing: yes, the Dems did accept some Republican amendments, and yes, we had the fun of the Gang of Six during the summer, and yes, there are lots of Republicans who are dedicated to opposing anything that Democrats propose.  But make no mistake about it: this bill is designed to get exactly 60 votes.  It's designed to be the most liberal bill that 60 Senators can vote for.  And Pelosi is doing the same in the House, which is why there are so many close votes on that side. 

So, while it is true that Republicans are following a rejectionist strategy, it's also true that Democrats are placing a priority on getting the most liberal bill possible, not the most possible votes.  And the downside of that is that it's going to mean that one or two Senators are always going to be in a position to derail things.

Dean's Facts

I guess people can tell that I'm not a big fan of Howard Dean...I think I called him the liberal comp for John McCain recently, and I'm happy with that comparison.  I'm not say that Dean is a self-important, irresponsible showboating blowhard who doesn't bother to learn the substance of the policies he claims to care about...but I have heard people say such things about John McCain. 

I'll also note that according to Ezra Klein, one of Dean's chief complaints of the Senate bill was a particular provision, the absence of which was so important that he took to the pages of the Washington Post and to the airwaves to urge Senators to kill the most significant liberal achievement since the Great Society, is actually something that's...in the bill. 

I'll add that Ezra's a trustworthy and responsible guy who would immediately 'fess up and apologize if he got something like this wrong.

More on the Public Option in the Future

Hey, I'm not jealous just because Nate Silver's set of 20 Questions (for liberals against the health care bill) was a lot more visible than my similar set of 12 Questions...his questions were very good, and he and I seem to be on the same page on the basic situation.

That said, I have to call him out on this response-to-response:

The notion that only Blue Dog seats are endangered is flat wrong. There's almost no way that Democrats will end up with more votes for a public option at any point in the near future -- keep in mind that the House passed its bill, which had only a mediocre public option, by just about the bare minimum of votes.

I think it's correct that it's very unlikely that the House will be more liberal in the near future, and somewhat unlikely that the Senate will be more liberal in the near future.  That's just to say that the current number of Dems in the House is probably at a high water mark; it's still possible that the next Senate could have one or two more Democrats (before good GOP opportunities in 2012 and 2014), but probably not.

However, that doesn't mean that there will be fewer votes for a public option in the next Congresses.  As I discussed earlier this week, the most likely effect of passage of the current Senate bill is that all future Democratic candidates are going to be far more supportive of adding a public option.  So there may be fewer Democrats in the next Congress, but more public option supporters. 

Moreover -- and in this Nate and I agree, except that I think I'm more optimistic about it -- reconciliation is a perfectly usable path for the public option in the next Congress, if (and only if) the basic bill passes now. 

But if the bill fails now, I just don't see anything reviving any time soon, and certainly not anything that will need more liberals in both Houses of Congress.

Impeachment

Steve Benin has the scoop on this week's right-wing brouhaha -- the allegation that Obama threatened Ben Nelson with the closure of the US Strategic Command (located in Nebraska) if Nelson doesn't support health care reform.  The charge comes complete with a classic conspiracy-theory proof: denials by Obama and Nelson that it happened, and Democratic resistance to Congressional hearings to get to the bottom of it, pretty much show that it must be true (no, really; Benin's post claimed that, and I thought he must be exaggerating, but no.  Also, the fact --acknowledged in the accusation -- that there isn't even a round of base-closing going on, and so it would have made no sense for Obama to do what Obama and Nelson deny happened, is just proof that Obama must be both venal and incompetent).

Steve concludes:

Just think, if Republicans take back Congress, far-right bloggers will publish nonsense on a Monday, and congressional committees will spend the rest of the week investigating the nonsense. It will be the mid-90s all over again.

I'm afraid this is far too mild.  If Republicans take back the House, the odds are very good that they will impeach Barack Obama. 

Unfortunately, it's not clear what happens when history repeats itself if the first time was a farce.