The news:
Greg Sargent reports that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has said that he would support holding a reconciliation vote on a public option.
Said Reid spokesman Rodell Mollineau in a written statement (emphasis Sargent’s):
Senator Reid has always and continues to support the public option as a way to drive down costs and create competition. That is why he included the measure in his original health care proposal.
If a decision is made to use reconciliation to advance health care, Senator Reid will work with the White House, the House, and members of his caucus in an effort to craft a public option that can overcome procedural obstacles and secure enough votes.
But Sargent also relays the doubts of Senate leadership aides, who say they aren’t sure if the Senate parliamentarian will allow the passage of a public option via reconciliation.
There are several possibilities here:
1. Democrats are convinced that things will turn their way by November (figuring on an improving economy, etc) and thus will be able to get away with whatever the heck they want right now.
2. Democrats are just blind to the sea-change which has occurred in American politics.
3. Reid, et al are just giving some eyewash to the leftist base – keeping them quiet and on-side while, in the end, not doing anything to further anger the American people (so, pretend you are pushing health care until your spin-meisters can talk the leftwing rank-and-file in to genuinely believing that it was the mean, old GOP who failed on health care, not the Democrats with their massive Congressional majority).
We’ll just have to see how this plays out. My view is that the change in American politics is not related to the economy – in other words, that even if things hadn’t got as bad as they are and even if they improve between now and November, it won’t fundamentally alter the situation. Unemployment below 9% might rescue a few Democrats on the margins, but the determination to take America back from the corrupt and the Statists is based upon dismay over the way things are done, rather than any particular situation of the moment.
Time will tell, as in all these things…
UPDATE, McConnell on the issue:
Using reconciliation would be an acknowledgment that there is bipartisan opposition to their bill, another in a series of backroom deals, and the clearest signal yet that they’ve decided to completely ignore the American people.
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