Dead Plan Walking

ObamaCare is still twitching on the table, leaving some doubt about whether the patient could still be revived. There were three basic routes to a bill. One was for the Senate and House Democrats to promise a compromise bill. That was what they were working on before Tuesday, but such a bill cannot now pass the Senate. A second was for the House to pass the existing Senate bill word for word. That strikes me as the only viable option at this point, but Speaker Pelosi made it reasonably clear that she doesn't have the votes. The third way is to pass the Senate bill and then amend it through the reconciliation process, which would only require 51 votes. It is not clear that this could be done without abusing the reconciliation process, which is supposed to apply only to parts of a bill that result in a change of outlays or taxes.

A conservative site, NRO's Corner, says that the Democrats are serious about the latter option. John Marshall at a liberal site, TPM, has this:

My strongest sense however is not so much that decisions have been made to drop reform as that it's something like a matter of survivors walking around -- half dazed -- after some sort of natural disaster. There is no plan.

Maybe the Democrats will firm up for a final push, but a fuller account at the Politico makes that seem unlikely.

For the first time in the yearlong push, Democratic aides — and even some members — finally acknowledged privately that the fear of failure was real. And Congress recessed for the weekend without an obvious path forward as rank-and-file Democrats started splintering in different directions.

Democrats struggled all year to maintain a coalition in support of health care reform without any GOP votes. Republican Scott Brown's improbable win in Massachusetts on Tuesday now looks like it has the potential to end that almost-impossible balancing act.

It's easy to forget that the House version of the bill passed with a much narrower margin 220 (only two more votes than a bare majority) than the Senate bill. It was generally assumed that Pelosi had more votes than she needed, but allowed a lot of wary Democrats to vote against it. That may no longer be true after Tuesday's election in Massachusetts.

To see why, consider this illustration from the Boston Globe:

In U.S. House districts 2, 3, 4, 5, 9 and 10, most of the precincts were carried by Scott Brown. Now these are all Democrats reelected by strong majorities in 2008, as the chart shows. But it was enough to scare Barney Frank into throwing doubt on the legislation.

Every Democrat who has reason to fear for his or her seat, and even some that probably don't, have to wonder whether they can survive voting for any version of the Senate bill. That would be especially true if the process looks like it involves any more shenanigans.

The fat lady ain't started singing yet, but she is sure as Hell on stage and everyone is looking in her direction.

Comments

[donCoyote]

Crikey, this monstrosity of a bill has more lives than those freaking zombies of yours Professor! (sorry for the duplicate post but I meant to put it here)

[KB]

You are right on that one, dc. But like zombies, it has lost its pallor and it's lurching pretty bad. I see that Christopher Dodd recommended that Congress "take a month off." I think that means drop this thing like a hot potato. We'll know by the end of the week, I think, whether the zombie will rise or not.