From TPM, a huge and now disillusioned supporter of heath care reform
Speaker Pelosi just said “I don’t see the votes for [passing the Senate bill] at this time.” In other words, plug pulled. Health care reform over.
Would have been nice to know back in January they didn’t have the fortitude for this.
Doug Henwood in a Facebook post commenting on the Brown victory
The Dems are a party of capital that has to pretend that it isn’t. That’s what’s behind their awfulness – not a lack of brains or backbone or any other essential organ.
The Dems play soft cop to the Repub hard cop. On most issues they are joined at the hip. That’s why the Dems don’t fight much. At the congressional level, they are basically complicit and in agreement with the Repubs.
She didn’t pull the plug on it. The drain was already open. The Senate raped the bill so bad it was on it’s death bed. Now the talk is splitting it up into smaller bills and forcing the Repubs into the position of voting on the popular stuff. They gotta say yes to some of that or they will end up looking over their shoulders at election time.
Reality is with the change in Mas the only way the Senate will pass it again is by converting a Republican, which won’t happen, and Pelosi know that. This isn’t something she controls. She’s simply stating the reality as it is: Republicans are working as a block, and have been since they killed off all their internal voice of dissent back under Newt and the “contract with America”.
The only way this will happen is if it happens before Brown is seated (which Obama has already put the kabash on, saying it would seem “heavy handed”, as if Republicans never used heavy-handed mentods), OR if the House approves the Senate version without changes, which means the Senate doesn’t have to vote on it again. Neither look like possibilities at this point.