THE MYTH OF THE MODERATE DEM
Devil's Advocate
By DICK MORRIS
Published on TheHill.com on November 10, 2009
Don't assume that the 38 Democrats who voted against House Speaker
Nancy Pelosi's (D-Calif.) extremist version of healthcare reform
wouldn't have supported it if their votes had been needed. The days
before the final passage on Saturday were not filled with stirring
appeals to get Democrats to back the bill so much as an auction to
decide whom to let off the hook.
Knowing that the bill will likely be political suicide for any
red-state Democratic congressman, particularly if he or she is a
freshman, the House leadership had to negotiate with its members to
assure that the 38 defectors were the ones who needed the political
cover the most. That there would be 38 Democrats who would oppose the
bill was pre-ordained. Who they would be was the subject of
negotiations right up to the wire.
Any real chance that the bill could have been defeated ended with the
approval of the anti-abortion amendment. But there remained the
question of how to keep the marginal Democrats in Congress and the
party in power.
The chicanery and deception that led up to the vote underscore the myth
of the moderate Democrat. The entire Democratic Caucus -- with
pitifully few exceptions -- was committed to passing the healthcare
bill. Had it needed all 258 Democrats to vote yes, the bill would have
come awfully close.
But the Democratic margin in the House meant that the leaders did not
need 258 Democrats, they only needed 219. So they let the most marginal
among them off the hook and allowed them to vote against the bill,
preserving their chances at reelection.
The real question facing the voters is whether they will be deceived by
this sleight of hand in which moderate Democrats pretend that the bill
was passed over their objections. Will the voters buy their claims that
it became law despite their best efforts?
Once, the voters might have fallen for this trickery. But not now. The
electorate is far too well-informed to believe that any Democratic
congressman really opposed this bill.
The days of the Democrats who live in red states and who let this bill
pass, whether they nominally voted for it or not, are numbered. They
could not and would not read the handwriting on the walls of New Jersey
and Virginia and are about to suffer the fate of their ancestors in
1994 who disregarded similar warnings. Their political careers are
about to come to an end.
In the Senate, where 60 votes are needed, there can be no such shell
games. All Democrats must report for duty for this bill to pass. So
Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), Blanche Lincoln
(D-Ark.), Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), Byron Dorgan
(D-N.D.), Jon Tester (D-Mont.), Max Baucus (D-Mont.), Tim Johnson
(D-S.D.) and Kay Hagan (D-N.C.) have a serious decision to make. They
have no place to hide.
And should Harry Reid invoke the reconciliation option, he would face
other defections from Democrats who realize that they, too, might one
day be in the minority and need the filibuster to maintain their
relevance in the future.
For now, all Democrats should compare the results in Virginia and New
Jersey in 1993 and in 2009.
In Virginia, in both years, an incumbent Democrat sat in the statehouse
but was not permitted to run again. In both years, the Republican won
the governorship by identical 58-41 margins.
In New Jersey, in both years, the incumbent Democratic governor sought
another term and lost: in 1993 by 49-48 and in 2009 by 49-45.
If any Democratic congressman is na�ve enough to believe that a debacle
in 2010 will not follow the forecasts of 2009 as surely as the deluge
of 1994 followed the precursor of 1993, he doesn't deserve to be in
Congress. And he won't be.
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