I agree, many dems (and republicans too) have been sadly lacking in guts lately. Moreso when the patriot act and two wars were authorized with little dissent. But I can’t see how guts would have helped with health care. The opposition was simply to united, and we just don’t have the numbers to override a filibuster. So you do what you have to do to get people on board. The Rs know that passing a health care bill helps the dems. They have been desperate to kill it, because killing it all but kills the Obama presidency.

click here

Anyway, lots of things I would have liked were never going to make the bill given the way things are in congress now. I wish we could find a dozen sane R’s in the senate and convince them to help the American people out so we wouldn’t have had to compromise with the likes of Leiberman, Nelson, et. al., but I’m not convince there are a dozen sane R’s left in the country, still yet in the senate.

You’re dead right that it ain’t over yet. Unfortunately, history tells us that in conference (1) the Senate usually prevails, and (2) bills usually get watered down to the lowest common denominator. Now, neither of these are absolutes, but I’ll be happy if the final bill isn’t any worse than the current Senate bill (which, BTW, I don’t much like).

It is, of course, true that Congress “writes legislation”. However, Congress is a relatively disorganized bunch. For at least the 20th (21st) Century, significant legislation has been prompted and marshaled by the executive branch. The Senate’s Health Care Gang of Six Bozos was an uncommon approach to drafting critical legislation. In my opinion, it was a terrible idea — it gave the control of the fundamental legislative bottleneck to a group that collectively represent 3% of the national population.

It was the President’s idea, but to me it was still a bad one. Now, I know that he’s a smart person (although if his IQ is really 142, I may have him by a couple points), and I’m willing to consider a certain amount of belief in “11-dimensional chess”. But the thing about any-dimensional chess is that eventually there are exchanges and results, and the results are what count.

It may be that the final result of the Health Care bill will be exactly what Team Obama calculated was possible to achieve. They will no doubt feel good about that, and, hopefully, so will I. However, unless something extraordinary happens in conference (go, Nancy), I will continue to believe that the final result could have been significantly better if the Administration had been willing to risk a bit of its “political capital”.

Why can’t we have 5-dimensional hold ‘em?

And a lesson learned.

We need more good Democrats in the Senate.

Lisa, you have been no help whatsoever on this very important issue for Alaskans. Harry Crawford, your turn.