The deform being planned in Washington isn’t looking so inevitable.
I’m starting to wonder if, and hope that, the stimulus atrocity was the high-water mark of this administration in terms of ramming its agenda through Congress.
[Afternoon update]
Health-care plan? What health-care plan?
The atmospherics in congress are beginning to resemble those of 1993. The House passed Clinton’s BTU energy tax bill by the same narrow margin in 1993 as it did the climate bill late last month. The BTU tax bill died in the Senate, as I expect the climate bill to do.
The squabbles over health care reform are resembling those that occurred with Hillary care in 1993 and 1994 before it finally dies. Even Obama is similar to Clinton in that he ran his campaign as a moderate, then became far left once in office. This resulted in many democrats from moderate districts loosing their seats in the 1994 election. The moderate democrats are well aware of history repeating itself and want to prevent it from happening to them. They are well aware that they were elected as a response to Bush’s neonazicon foreign policy and not because their constituents have suddenly favored far-left economic policies.
The moderate democrats are well aware of history repeating itself and want to prevent it from happening to them.
History doesn’t really repeat itself but it frequently rhymes.
Another 1994 aside, the Democrats also lost a number of Congresspeople to the Republicans after the election. Doesn’t mean that the Republicans will be able to repeat the process (a lot seems to have depended on the leadership of the day), but if Democrats lose more moderates to the Republicans in 2010-11 like they did in 1994-95, that will hurt the Democrats even further and maybe radicalize them even further.
Uh-oh. Isn’t this how cap-‘n’-trade got passed?
Don’t count on it. Unless the GOP regains control of both houses of Congress next year Obama is simply going to try again in 2011. The chances of that happening is pretty slim, even if support for The One collapses completely in the coming year – Generally it takes the voters 3-4 election cycles to truly, truly regret putting Democrats in charge of anything so don’t expect a GOP renaissance until 2012 at the earliest.