If anybody does, I can guarantee it will be the Democrats. With the Medicare buy-in gone, the liberal bloggers and probably liberal senators want no part of it. Without any sort of government option to force costs to go down, liberals see this bill as merely a give away to insurance companies. This is, of course, a problem for the Democratic party right now. When Republicans ran the show, there was none of this disunity business. If you didn’t vote with the Republican caucus, you weren’t a Republican, simple enough. The Democratic party is considerably more fractured though. In fact, rather than having their own unified ideology, Democrats have sort of been just the not-Republican party.
Enter the liberal Internet. Sites like DailyKos and MoveOn mobilize thousands of supporters for exactly what they want. Their message is pointed and far-left. They can’t afford to neglect the moderates though. So they are stuck in a tight spot. It’s difficult to be inclusive of the spectrum of the Democratic party when the viewpoints are so varied. This normally isn’t a problem, but when you are trying to rework an entire industry, the faults are exposed and Republicans simply exploit these.
Long story short: The only losers in this situation, politically speaking, are the Democrats. If they emerge from this over half-year discussion with nothing, they will absolutely be to blame. The Republicans had their attempt at killing reform over the summer, people realized it was mostly hot air. Now it’s the Democrats’ chance to kill it–at their own peril.
