Health Bill Looks Dead No Matter What

[Bulletin: As we went to press, Brown has been declared the winner by ABC News, and Coakley has conceded. Today’s commentary can nonetheless stand as is.] There were no voting results to speak of early Tuesday evening, but that didn’t stop pundits from shifting into high gear with speculation about the implications of a Republican win in Massachusetts. The pundits ran with the hypothetical story simply because it was far more interesting than the dog-bites-man drivel that will result if Democrat Martha Coakley bests Scott Brown in the special election to fill Teddy Kennedy’s U.S. Senate seat. As of late Tuesday afternoon, that seemed unlikely to nearly everyone interviewed by the major news networks, with the exception of a Democratic strategist we happened to catch on Fox late in the afternoon. She said the race was a dead heat according to polls conducted Tuesday morning, but this was flatly contradicted by the blowout numbers cited by GOP consultants and pollsters.

Earlier in the day, there were clues that Democratic Party stalwarts considered the race a lost cause.  For one, they slandered Coakley as a “bad” candidate. In fact, when Mr. Obama was riding high in the polls, Coakley could have demolished Brown even if it had been revealed during the campaign that she was fired from a job for embezzling to support a heroin habit. Considering what’s at stake for the Democrats here, it took more than a weak candidate to lose this one.  Another sign that the Democrats were bracing for a loss was that Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin trotted out the “nuclear option” if Democrats lose their filibuster-proof majority.

‘Nuclear Option’

The news media seemed to take the nuclear option seriously, but it’s a non-starter as far as we’re concerned. Using this tactic, the House would approve the Senate healthcare bill and send it directly to the President for his signature. Then, the House and Senate would work out their differences through a process formally known as “reconciliation.” Compromises would require only 51 Senate votes to pass. Trouble is, the House barely passed its own version of healthcare reform, and majority support for it, let alone for a Senate bill that differs in fundamental and highly controversial ways, is hardly a given. Moreover, the reconciliation process is allowed only in instances where a provision in a bill could throw its budget out of balance. This means that abortion provisions in the House bill will be, not merely a stumbling block, but a probable deal-killer.

Even if the nuclear option could be made to work, the Democrats would probably be committing political suicide if they detonate it. The left-leaning Huffington Post sees the healthcare package as nothing less than a “poison pill for Democratic Senators.”  Huffington columnist Robert Kuttner went on to do a post-mortem on the bill — and never mind the fact that Mr. Obama, in the wake of a Coakley defeat, will pronounce himself energized for a fight-to-the-death over this legislative corpse. Meanwhile, here’s Kuttner with the political left’s coup de grace:  “By embracing a deal that required the government to come up with a trillion dollars of subsidy for the insurance industry, Obama was forced to pursue policies that were justifiably unpopular — such as taxing premiums of people with decent insurance; or compelling people to buy policies that they often couldn’t afford, or diverting money from Medicare. He managed to scare silly the single most satisfied clientele of our one island of efficient single-payer health insurance — senior citizens — and to alienate one of his most loyal constituencies, trade unionists.”

Does that sound like the kind of legislation that should be given a chance, even if Coakley beats Brown? We think not.

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