Strategic Defiance

by digby

Big Tent Democrat says that I’m an idiot for thinking if the progressive caucus fails to vote no on a final health care bill that doesn’t have a public option, that they can then vote no as a bloc on other issues like war spending. He says they will never be taken seriously again.

Au contraire, mon frere. (I readily agree that I may be an idiot, but not this time.) There are many facets to negotiation but what really matters is what you are willing to to walk away from and what people think you are willing to walk away from. Here’s the real difference between health care reform and war funding: Progressives want to vote for the first and they don’t want to vote for the second. The strategy all flows from that.

A public plan is something they want in the health care legislation, but they also want a whole bunch of other things in the legislation as well, much of which will be of direct benefit to their constituents. Mostly, they want to pass an historic health care reform bill that the Democrats have been fighting for for over 60 years. They want it badly.

The war, on the other hand, gives them nothing. Obama had to twist arms high and hard the last time to get them on board and even had to put in some wacky IMF promise to keep the corporate lackeys in place. And it was only five months into his presidency. It won’t be the same next time he comes to them for money to escalate the war, especially after talking endlessly about controlling costs on health care. They really don’t want it.

This isn’t just about the power of the Progressive Bloc to change, move or obstruct legislation. It’s also about what the Progressive Bloc really cares about and what their ultimate bottom line really is. Issues matter more the simple exercise of power and on health care it’s a far more complicated set of criteria than it is on the war.

What we are asking them to do in these cases is defy their president on a bill they both want very much to pass and I would suggest that isn’t going to happen very often, if ever. But that doesn’t mean that progressives aren’t ever going to defy their president — they are just far more likely to do it on legislation that he wants to pass and they don’t. They can win too, if they argue from the perspective of fundamental principles and values. The war is the logical place for them to make that kind of stand, although it looks like Obama is going to give them quite a few other opportunities as well.

None of this is to say that health care reform hasn’t been aided by the progressives taking their stand. God only knows what Rahm’s corporate lackeys and Blue Dogs would have dealt away if they hadn’t been fighting on the public option. And anyway, you have to start organizing somewhere and there’s no time like the present, so everything that’s been done has established infrastructure and organization which is all to the good. Indeed, if I were a member of congress instead of an obscure blogger, I would be out there proclaiming that I will hold fast to the public option until the last Blue Dog dies. ( I assume that next week, they will be doing just that — and we will have to help them.)

But between you and me and the blogroll, I don’t think they will end up voting against the bill on that basis, for all the reasons I have stated. Don’t tell Rahm.

Update: I see that Big Tent Dem didn’t get that I was teasing him about calling me an idiot. I thought the” au contraire, mon frere” thing would be enough to signal that I wasn’t in attack mode, but it obviously fell flat and I’m very sorry about it. I was just expounding on my theory about the progressive caucus and didn’t mean it personally in the least. His ideas on this are perfectly reasonable. I just see some other avenues going forward. Mea culpa.

(Also the link has been fixed. It was not intentional.)

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