This is only half a rhetorical question. Because I think we all know that the use of the filibuster has expanded and evolved greatly over the last twenty years — mainly but by no means only on the part of Republicans. But back in 1994 — even though health care never even came out of committee let alone a floor vote — I don’t remember it really being raised as a possibility that health care would need to surmount a filibuster. But am I misremembering?
I don’t go much for emotional appeals, but we received an email from TPM Reader MD this week that I haven’t been able to shake:
Hey TPM, long time reader — going back to the Trent Lott-Strom Thurmond days — first-time writer.
Like everyone I have a sob-story to tell about health care. After telling it to countless liberals who oppose the Senate’s health-care reform bill, I still haven’t heard a good answer from them about why they can’t support the Senate bill. They usually stop talking, or try to change the subject.
Brian Beutler interviewed Sen. Sherrod Brown today to get his read on the state of health care reform negotiations and whether or not there’s any plan …
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) is engaged with House progressives, trying to tease out a solution to the health care reform impasse–but he says that at the highest levels of the Senate and the White House, there’s still no plan, and he doubts whether President Obama will insert himself forcefully into the process.
Read the rest here.
In this post, Matt Yglesias gets at what’s so wrong about pulling the plug now on reform and why a lot of people on the Hill aren’t able to quite see this. Needing to make that complicated machine work people up there think about all the different bills, different iterations of bills, how there was never one “Obamacare”, all the back and forth between House and Senate. But it’s hard when you’re living in that world to fully grasp that hardly anyone outside of DC has any idea what you’re even talking about when you get into all that stuff. Or cares. It’s just there was Obamacare. They worked on it all year. It got really messy. It was basically done. And then they just stopped. Read Matt’s piece.
Among the more painful realities to face after Tuesday night’s election was how utterly unprepared Democrats were for the effects that a Scott Brown win would have on health care reform.
Just now, in an interview with TPMDC, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) conceded that Democrats still have no plan for how to advance reform in the aftermath of the Massachusetts results.
Rep. John Dingell (D-MI) tells TPMDC that time is of the essence in salvaging health care reform.
I’ve written a lot of harsh things about what the Dems are doing today — or not doing — on Health Care Reform. In this piece, though, EJ Dionne explains one of the key reasons behind the train-wreck: House Dems deep distrust of Senate Dems — and discussions underway about how to possibly move forward.
I’m not sure I’ve ever heard Obama say anything as dissonant as his remarks just now in Ohio where he dismissed Washington as being “all in a tizzy” about health care reform after Tuesday’s election in Massachusetts.
Compare that with everything Obama has been saying about health care reform for the last year, when reform was the centerpiece of his agenda. We’ve put together a reel. Watch. Read More
Obama, speaking just now in Ohio:
I understand why after the Massachusetts election people in Washington were all in a tizzy trying to figure out what this means for health reform, Republicans and Democrats, what does it mean for Obama? Is he weakened? Oh, how’s he gonna survive this? That’s what they do.
Video soon …