Everyone who favors health care reform, including me, is worried about the Blue Dog Democrats. As the state director of Health Care For America Now in PA, I’m concerned about the five blue dog Democrats in Pennsylvania and our staff, volunteers and I are working as hard as we can to keep all of them on the straight and narrow.
We have a long week ahead of us dealing with the Blue Dogs. But I think we are going to win, for two reasons. One is the enormous pressure we are going to bring on Blue Dogs, from our coalition partners and the activists we identified. I’m building and talking and writing about that pressure fifteen hours a day, so I won’t say that much about it here. Instead I want to consider a second reason: given the political logic of the moment, while a lot of the Blue Dogs don’t want to vote for the health care plan, they all want it to pass. And when it comes down to the wire, there is going to be pressure within the Blue Dog caucus itself for members to support the bill.
The reason is that Senator DeMint is right: this is a critical moment in the life of the Obama administration. If the administration loses health care reform, then it will be severely weakened. And if it is severely weakened, and can’t accomplish other important things this year and next—such as a major jobs program to reduce unemployment before the 2010 election—Democrats are going to take it on the chin in that election.
If that happens, it’s not going to be the leaders of the health care reform effort in the House—Congressmen Rangel, Waxman, and Miller—who suffer at the polls. Their seats are as safe as can be. It is going to the Democratic Freshmen and the Democrats in marginal, purple seats who are going to take suffer if we lose health care reform, that is, the Blue Dogs.
That’s what happened in 1994 when the Clinton health care plan failed. And while circumstance are not exactly the same—we are working a year not months before an election—a damaged, ineffectual presidency in a time of deep recession is a clear and present danger to Democratic electoral success in 2010. And the threat of large Democratic losses affects not not just the Democrats in marginal seats but all those Democrats who, having taken over committee and sub-committee chairmanships not so long ago, are not ready to lose them.
Why will the Democrats make this calculation this year when they didn’t in 1994? For a few reasons. First, they can learn from the history of 1994. In 1994, on the other hand, Democrats had been in power in the House continuously for forty six years and for all but one Congresses since 1932. The idea that they would lose the House was almost inconceivable. The party leadership and committee chairs were not nearly as motivated to pass legislation to hold on to control of the House as Speaker Pelosi and Democratic committee chairs are today.
But why didn’t the marginal Democrats fight harder in 1994 to pass legislation and save their seats? In part because the accepted theory of the time was that incumbency was an advantage so hard to overcome that, as a result, House seats had become almost insulated from national trends. Incumbent House members, it was thought, lost when they individually cast a wrong vote or individually lost touch with their district. National trends could not defeat them.
Now, after 1994 and 2006, we have been reminded that national trends can make a difference. And Senator DeMint and Bill Kristol and the other Republican leaders who are casting the health care vote as make or break for President Obama, are also reminding everyone that his was Kristol’s strategy in 1994 and that it lead to the Democratic loss of the House.
The other way in which 2009 is different from 1994 is that there really was nothing that the marginal, mostly junior members of the Democratic House majority could do to save health care reform. The Democratic leadership never got its act together in 1994, never got the three committees agree on a single bill and never go any of those committees to actually pass legislation. Now, we have agreement on a single bill and two committees have acted.
If the Blue Dogs actually have the votes to stop or dramatically weaken health care reform—and that is already doubtful—then they will have to make a choice. And I am betting that if they face that decision, they are going to make sure the bill passes. Some of the Blue Dogs will not want to vote for it, mostly out of fear of voting for a tax increase or offending important insurance interest groups in their district. But all of the Blue Dogs are going to want the bill to pass. And pressure from the leaderships of both the House and the Blue Dogs and promises of special Presidential and party—and progressive labor and community group—support in the 2010 election is going to make the difference.
Of course, even if Blue Dogs want something to pass, they might prefer a weaker bill, with lower subsidies and lower tax increases. But they are not going to get it, if only because the House leadership knows that the Blue Dogs need the bill to pass more than anyone else. The truth is that Blue Dog leadership doesn’t have a lot of bargaining power.
(There is another other reasons that the Blue Dogs have limited bargaining power. They don’t have enough numbers to stop legislation anywhere (the only checkpoint where they are really strong is the Energy and Commerce Committee) unless they all vote against the bill, and the grassroots pressure we have been bringing on the Blue Dogs pretty much guarantees that they won’t all stand together.)
So I am expecting, in the next few days, a face saving compromise that allows the Blue Dogs to claim that they made the bill more “fiscally responsible” and effective in controlling costs. An independent commission to reform health care delivery and payment systems is the likely vehicle of compromise, which is good because we would benefit from it. And then the majority of Blue Dogs will vote for the bill and it will easily pass the House.
The consequences will be good not only for public policy but politics. By enacting the most important social welfare legislation since Social Security, Democrats will in the near future turn many of the marginal, purple districts bright blue.
Every poll show that a guarantee of quality, affordable health care is enormously popular. Every poll shows that huge majorities of Americans want to choose between competing public and private plans. Every poll shows that we believe that the costs of health care should be shared by individuals, business, and government.
That popularity will be enduring. Good health care reform—and the House bill is a good one—will address the real concerns of Americans by keep health care costs in check and relieving the anxiety we have about securing health care—an anxiety shared by those who have and those who don’t have health insurance now. Regardless of whether legislation that attains that goal receives Republican votes or not, it will become a permanent fixture of our life, as unassailable and as popular as Social Security.
Right now, in some of the purple states and Congressional districts in the country, Senators and Representatives are making fine calculations, trying to figure out how far they can go in publicly supporting legislation that worries some of their constituents. What we activists, and the House leaders, should try to show them is that this is not the time for a careful calibration of political forces. This is the time for boldness and for leadership. For if members of Congress act strongly in support of health care reform, the nature of those forces will be permanently changed.
Just as Social Security become the emblem of the Democratic party’s commitment to the American middle class in the forties, fifties and sixties, health care reform will be the hallmark of the party for the next generation. And just as the social security was the basis on which people voted for Democrats for forty years, a successful and far reaching health care reform will become the well from which Democrats can draw for the next forty years.
That is the political reality to which the House plan points. It is part of the reason the Democratic leaders and committee chairs are so well organized right now. And if some of the Blue Dogs had a little more foresight and courage, they would recognize that the best place for worried Democrats to be right now is not in a back room trying to weaken a good bill. Instead, they should be out in front of a growing political movement for the most important social welfare legislation since 1935.
Some of them are reluctant to be there or even to vote for the bill. But the combination of the immense grassroots pressure we are building in every state, and the logic of this political moment, will lead to a major victory for the good guys quite soon.