Let's sum it up this way:
- The Republicans have decided that the best thing that they can do is to be obstructionist. To be fair, it is working brilliantly well as a strategy for them: but it is also "high-risk, high-reward".
- So there are two options that come out of Thursday's meeting: compromise or no-compromise. I'm not a big fan of the bill as it is-- it may be better than nothing (where "better" means fewer people going bankrupt because of catastrophic health problems and fewer people dieing because they can't get adequate care) but I can't stand up and tell you "ohmygawd! the bill is wonderful and has to be enacted!". So I think that "compromise" is better for the country if it involves worthwhile changes to the bill.
- Strategically, "compromise" means that the Democrats keep control of both Houses of Congress in the fall-- the Republicans will, essentially, have had the rug pulled out from under them from a talk-track to run on perspective. So it's not likely to happen.
- "No compromise" gives the Republicans a chance of winning one or both houses in the fall (more likely the House of Representatives than the Senate-- looking at: http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/ five or six Republican Senate victories are imagineable but that won't be enough to win the Senate).
- But "high-risk, high-reward": it's worth noting that "no compromise" could-- could-- lead to Democratic gains in the fall. Here's the scenario: the bill passes as proposed, the Democrats then campaign on getting something done while the Republicans have been obstructionist, and they make it as populist as possible. They've already taken steps in that direction-- by inserting a cap on health insurance premium hikes (which is not necessarily good policy), they've put the Republicans in the position of taking the wrong political position.
What's my guess? I think that no compromise happens, the President and Congress enact more or less the Senate bill plus the tweaks proposed Monday morning. It's still possible the Democrats could lose many seats in the Congress-- maybe enough to lose the House itself.
But it is within the realm of possibility that if Obama changes the political view of the healthcare legislation, if they beat the drum on some of the other populist things they've done, if they enact other populist legislation that the Republicans will certainly oppose, if the stimulus money kicks in big time this spring, and if the President kicks into full campaign mode-- the Democrats could either cut those losses or even eke out some gains.
To be fair, the President and the Democrats are trying to do all those things: they were touting the rest of the legislation (like the Lilly Ledbetter act) that the President has passed that is populist Sunday on the talk shows, they're doing some populist bank-bashing legislation and re-regulating, they've timed the stimulus money to peak around late spring/early summer, and again, the whole health-care premium hike cap.
It's too early to tell.
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