{"id":184662,"date":"2010-01-15T11:57:18","date_gmt":"2010-01-15T16:57:18","guid":{"rendered":"tag:business.theatlantic.com,2010:\/\/3.33594"},"modified":"2010-01-15T12:46:43","modified_gmt":"2010-01-15T17:46:43","slug":"if-brown-takes-coakley-down-whither-health-care","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/184662","title":{"rendered":"If Brown Takes Coakley Down, Whither Health Care?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m still not convinced that the chances of Scott Brown beating Martha Coakley<\/a> in the Massachusetts special election are as high as 50%.  I would like this to be true, but the universe is not here to please me–though Martha Coakley’s nearly unprecedented gift for putting her foot in her mouth<\/a> certainly seems to be.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, I think it’s worth speculating, as my colleague Derek Thompson already has:  what if?  What happens to health care?  <\/p>\n

The
\nprogressive pundits seem to be pretty united in their belief that this
\nis no big deal, nothing to see here, move along–either they’ll rush
\nthrough a compromise, or the House will pass the Senate bill
\nunchanged.  The libertarians I know, on the other hand, are equally
\nconvinced that this means the death of the bill.  At this point, there
\nare clearly a fair number of Democrats who would really rather not pass
\nthis, but are afraid to defy their party.  If all they have to do is
\nstall long enough to let Brown take his seat, well, that’s not hard to
\ndo, especially since Stupak seems so far pretty adamant about accepting
\nthe Senate compromise.<\/p>\n

Moreover, Brown’s election probably makes
\na bunch of Blue Dogs even more nervous than they already are–when
\nthey’re already about as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of
\nrocking chairs.  How much discipline can the leadership exert on those
\nquailing members, given how shaky many of their<\/i> campaigns are looking?  If Scott Brown can get elected in Massachusetts<\/i>
\nwith a pretty clear mandate to kill the health care bill–even in an
\noff-year special election . . . well, how frightened are you really
\nthat Harry Reid’s going to be around next year to take his vengeance?<\/p>\n

The
\nleadership could try to stall Brown’s certification.  But I have no
\nevidence that they are any less appalled by the idea than I am–and
\neven if they were, I’m pretty sure they’ve already realized that it
\nwould be political suicide.  There is simply a limit to how brazenly
\nlegislators can flout the will of the folks who elect them.  <\/p>\n

So
\nI guess I’m in the camp that thinks a Scott Brown victory means that
\nthe health care bill goes down.  On the other hand, given the
\nnear-perfect correlation of one’s opinion on the matter with one’s
\nopinion on the health care bill, I think it’s pretty clear that we’re
\nall seeing what we want to see.

\n

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\n\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m still not convinced that the chances of Scott Brown beating Martha Coakley in the Massachusetts special election are as high as 50%.  I would like this to be true, but the universe is not here to please me–though Martha Coakley’s nearly unprecedented gift for putting her foot in her mouth certainly seems to be. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":80,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-184662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/80"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184662"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184662\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}