"The excise tax and the public option. These issues are more than symbols. They are honest to Gawd serious issues for progressives and unions."

By Talk Left's Big Tent Democrat TL

Kevin Drum writes:

Obama has always kept his distance from both the netroots and the broader lefty base, and the congressional leadership largely did the same during healthcare negotiations. And it's not just that they ended up with a policy choice that progressives were unenthusiastic about. It's that they never even pretended to take progressives seriously. This is a mistake that George Bush and Karl Rove never made. The conservative base frequently didn't get what it wanted from them, but they always felt like they had a friend in the White House whose heart was in the right place. Progressive groups, conversely, have mostly felt like they got the back of the hand from the White House on healthcare. So it's understandable that they've either given up or, in a few cases, actively turned against the whole process.

This seems both right and wrong to me. It's true that the White House and SENATE Dems ignored the concerns of progressives on health care. And Villagers berated progressives (and unions) for not accepting political reality (now they berate the House Dems in the same fashion.) What is wrong though is the notion that the concern was about the process, as opposed to the policy. Indeed, Kevin reflects the condescension that the White House, the Senate and the Village has demonstrated throughout this health care debate. I'll give you two examples -- the excise tax and the public option. These issues are more than symbols. They are honest to Gawd serious issues for progressives and unions.

When the history of the health care issue in 2009 is written, I think that one of the main goats will be Jon Gruber, and the White House and Senate leaders who embraced his call for an excise tax.

Think what you want about the policy itself, it should have been obvious that the politics of the excise tax created the very significant risk of killing the bill. The unions, one of the most important Democratic constituencies, absolutely hated it. The inclusion of the excise tax was a disastrous political mistake.

But to this day, the White House, Senate leadership and the Villagers are willing to fight to the death for the excise tax. In short, they are willing to kill the bill unless there is an excise tax.

Kevin wrote that "this is also utterly pathetic because....well, it just is. So Max Baucus didn't listen to us. Big deal." On the excise tax, it was the biggest deal. It will likely kill the bill.

It is pathetic of proponents of the Senate health bill that they are so committed to an excise tax that will kill the whole bill if it is not included.

If progressive and union support is necessary for passing the Senate bill, then proponents of the Senate bill need to address their concerns. That is how politics works. If the Senate bill proponents want it passed, they need to round up the votes for it. That means winning support, not berating folks who do not support it. If they want to garner GOP support (good luck with that), then they need to make concessions to Republicans. If they want progressive and union support, they need to make concessions to progressives and the unions. That is how politics works.

It is pathetic to me that so many "pragmatic" Villagers do not understand this elementary principle of politics. The political realities seem foreign to them.

Speaking for me only