Democrats must be thinking: of 2008? It is almost difficult to believe that after the string of Democratic electoral victories in 2006 and 2008, the vast momentum for progressive “change” has fizzl out to a mere five vote margin over one of the most major campaign issues of 2008, a health-care bill pass in the House this weekend. If you raise hopes, you get votes; but if you dash hopes you lose votes.
That’s the karma of elections, and we saw it move last Tuesday
Democratic Party leaders scrambl, in response, to keep the momentum of “Yes, we can” going, by passing a health-care reform bill in the buy telemarketing data House this weekend. But despite claims of victory, Democratic party leaders probably wish that their first victory on the health-care reform road came from the Senate and not from the House. President Obama and Speaker Nancy Pelosi have always hop to let the Senate pass its health-care reform bill first, initiating a bandwagon effect so that passage in the House would follow quickly and more easily, and a final bill could be deliver to the president’s desk.
Instead, the order of bill passage has been revers
A making a final bill less likely than if things had gone according to plan. If even the House, which is not subject to supermajority measurement and analysis of results decision-making rules, barely squeak by with a 220-215 vote, then it has now set the upper limit of what health-care reform will ultimately look like. Potentially dissenting Democratic Senators see this, and there might now be a reverse band-wagoning effect. Already, we are hearing talk from the Senate about the timeline for a final bill possibly being push past Christmas into 2010. This is just what Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama were hoping against, by pushing the Senate to pass a bill first. Unfortunately for them, the Senate took so long that to keep the clean email momentum going (and amidst the electoral losses in NJ and VA last week), they felt compell to pass something in the House to signal a token show of progress.