What's next?

Your guilty conscience may force you to vote Democratic, but deep down inside you secretly long for a cold-hearted Republican to lower taxes, brutalize criminals, and rule you like a king. That's why I did this: to protect you from yourselves.

-Sideshow Bob

Ok, we're all feeling devastated over the possibility that Scott Brown's unthinkable victory has doomed health reform, that Democrats have, once again, clutched defeat from the jaws of victory.  As I wrote yesterday, The Choakley establishes a whole new level of losing.


But get your heads up, it's time to move forward.  All is not lost, and health reform is not dead yet.  


Indeed, liberal bloggers spent the day explaining the myriad possibilities for passing the bill.  By far the simplest solution would be for the House to simply pass the Senate bill as is, and then "patch it up" across the next several weeks by passing separate legislation through budget reconciliation, which cannot be filibustered.  More complicated would be to break up the bill, passing the more controversial portions through reconciliation and then essentially daring Republicans to vote against the popular ones.  Heck, there's even a hint that with Scott Brown already facing tough reelection prospects in 2012, it may be possible to persuade him and Olympia Snowe to agree to a compromise bill and avoid a filibuster.





So passing the bill seems workable, and hardly time to throw in the towel.


But inevitably, there are already calls from the putrid punditry to abandon the whole shebang.  Martha Coakley's defeat, so the conventional wisdom goes, was actually a rejection of President Obama, health care reform, and the national Democrats by angry Massachusetts voters.  Her loss reveals, so these pundits say, that Democrats have shifted too far to the left--too liberal even for Massachusetts--and must therefore reign in their progressive policies to avoid disaster in November.


Frankly, I just don't see the logic.  I don't claim to understand the intricacies of Congressional procedures, but I do know two things: this election was in no way a referendum on the person or policies of President Obama, and abandoning health reform now would be political suicide for Democrats.


Take, for example, The Weekly Standard's Fred Barnes, who maniacally cackles, "Obama's agenda, chiefly health care, took a beating in Massachusetts. In fact, it was the chief cause of Coakley's defeat."  Really?  On what basis?  For this to be true, you would have to believe that Massachusetts voters rejected Coakley because she supports a LESS liberal version of a health care policy already in place in their state--which Coakley's opponent voted FOR when he was in the state senate!  How can Scott Brown have won because of voters' opposition to health reform when he voted for a MORE liberal health bill himself?


Moreover, if voters opted for Brown out of rejection of President Obama, the polls would have been tight for months.  Instead, they show a steady double-digit lead for Coakley, which collapsed over the last two weeks.  Nothing happened over that period which would have made Obama's policies dramatically less popular in Massachusetts.  Simply put, there's just no logical way to spin this as a referendum on Obama's health reform package.


(For further reading, check out Nate Silver's post here, one of the smartest I've read.)


But even assuming that I'm wrong, and that this election actually DOES reveal health reform's deep-seated unpopularity, Democrats should NOT respond by moving to the right and abandoning the Obama agenda.  You can't beat a Republican by becoming more like one.  That's a foundational tenet of marketing: if you don't differentiate, you're dead.


Pretend you're a House Democrat.  The House could pass health reform right now and be done.  It's already passed its own health care bill.  For reform to fail now, it would mean that some House Democrats who had voted for reform would have to switch their votes and vote against the Senate bill--either you're a liberal who doesn't think the bill goes far enough, or a conservative who's spooked by Coakley's defeat.


Ultimately, I don't think House liberals will kill the bill.  The real worry is that "moderates" will abandon the bill to shore up their conservative credentials.


The key point is that if you're one of those wavering moderates, voting against the bill gains you nothing, because you've already voted for a health care bill.  Once you voted for the initial House bill, your die was cast, and nothing you do now can prevent the wave of attack ads for that initial vote.  What does abandoning health care now gain you except the privilege of saying, "I actually voted for health reform before I voted against it"?

More fundamentally, if you vote against health care, and you vote against climate legislation, and you vote against the stimulus, and you vote against financial regulation... what is left that defines you as a Democrat?  If you agree with conservatives on every major issue, why wouldn't a conservative voter just vote for a Republican and get the real thing?


As someone who does sales and marketing research for a living, I can tell you that you won't sell anything by making your product the same as everyone else's, by competing on the same attributes and features as your competitors.  You have to carve out your own space where you stand out.  Similarly, you can't beat a Republican if you have nothing different to offer.


I'll close on this note, by quoting Jonathan Cohn at The New Republic:

For all of the panic in Democratic ranks right now, the reality of the situation is stunningly simple. In the span of twenty-four hours, the House of Representatives--the House in which Democrats command a huge majority, in which liberals actually have some sway, and in which leadership actually has power--could put health care reform on the president's desk for signing.

One lousy vote. One lousy, stinking roll call vote. That's the only hurdle in the way of health care reform.

Are Democrats really willing to give up now?

Give your Congressperson a call and tell them not to give up now: pass the Senate bill and work out the kinks later.

UPDATED: More evidence that opposition to health reform is not what sank Martha Coakley:

•  82% of Obama supporters who voted for Brown support the public option, as do 86% of Obama voters who stayed home. 
  
• 57% of Obama voters who stayed home on Tuesday support the Senate health care bill or think it doesn't go far enough.
• And of Obama voters who cast a ballot for Brown, nearly half (49%) support the Senate bill or think it does not go far enough. Just 11% think it goes too far.  

To be fair, that poll was commissioned by MoveOn.org, but they're some interesting numbers nonetheless.


RELATED POSTS

Levels of losing: The Choakley

The Catch-22 for opponents of health care reform

WSJ inadvertently supports case for health care reform: do you want to trust your health to profit and loss?

There's no money in selling insurance to sick people: more reasons free markets don't work in health care

The Takeover: What opponents of health care reform don't get

Are Sarah Palin and Martin Feldstein closet universal health care supporte

Levels of losing: the Choakley

                I'm not here
                This isn't happening
                I'm not here
                I'm not here

                   - Radiohead

The Dead Man Walking.  The “This Can’t Be Happening.”  The Stomach Punch…… The Choakley?

Bill Simmons’ ingenious “Levels of Losing,” which ranks the myriad ways a sports fan can have his heart broken by a crushing loss, captures a universality of emotion with which any fan or political junkie can immediately empathize.  Watching Martha Coakley surrender Ted Kennedy’s seat to a Republican, I couldn’t help but wonder where Coakley’s epic fail would fall in the levels of losing.


After reading through Simmons’ sixteen levels of losing, I’ve narrowed the list down to the top five I think best describe Coakley’s defeat.  In making the list, I’ve kept in mind that Coakley’s loss is so much more than a failed individual contest, but that it represents the possible failure of everything liberals have been working for across the last year—indeed, the last half century—just at the precipice of success.

#5. The Role Reversal

Simmons’ definition: “Any rivalry in which one team dominated another team for an extended period of time, then the perennial loser improbably turned the tables… For the fans of the vanquished team, the most crushing part of the ‘Role Reversal’ isn't the actual defeat as much as the loss of an ongoing edge over the fans from the other team. You lose the jokes, the arrogance and the unwavering confidence that the other team can't beat you. There's almost a karmic shift. You can feel it.”

Why it fits: Well this doesn’t take a genius.  Massachusetts hadn’t elected a Republican to the Senate since 1972—that’s twelve straight elections without a Republican victory.  The seat won by Scott Brown had been held by Ted Kennedy, the arch-liberal of the Senate, for over 40 years.   Massachusetts has a formidable Democratic get-out-the-vote machine, and had voted for Barack Obama by 26 points just 13 months ago.  By all accounts, a Democrat running for Senate in Massachusetts should have been a juggernaut.

#4. The Dead Man Walking

Simmons’ definition: “Applies to any playoff series in which your team remains ‘alive,’ but they just suffered a loss so catastrophic and so harrowing that there's no possible way they can bounce back. ... Especially disheartening because you wave the white flag mentally, but there's a tiny part of you still holding out hope for a miraculous momentum change. ... So you've given up, but you're still getting hurt, if that makes sense.”

Why it fits: This is exactly how I felt in the two to three days before the election.  Every poll showed Coakley losing, and Brown had all the momentum, and yet still I held out hope—even predicting against all rational evidence that Coakley could pull it out.  Heck, even Nate Silver wrote two posts that offered up some sliver of possibility.  But ultimately, as we all knew deep down it must, the miraculous momentum change never came.

#3. The Broken Axle

Simmons’ definition: “When the wheels come flying off in a big game, leading to a complete collapse down the stretch. ... You know when it's happening because (A) the home crowd pushes their team to another level, and (B) the team that's collapsing becomes afflicted with Deer-In-The-Headlitis.”

Why it fits: Whether a new poll showing a surging Scott Brown, a fresh gaffe out of Coakley’s mouth, or a new media story chronicling Coakley’s collapse—and all three feeding each other in a self-fulfilling death spiral—it seemed the wheels kept falling off the Coakley caravan even after there were no wheels left to fall off.  First she scoffed at the basic duties of politicking: “As opposed to standing outside Fenway Park? In the cold? Shaking hands?”  Then she called Curt Schilling “another Yankees fan.”  Two insults to the Red Sox in one campaign?  Stick a fuahk in ‘ah, she’s done.

#2. The “This Can’t Be Happening”

Simmons’ definition: “You're supposed to win, you expect to win, the game is a mere formality. ... Suddenly your team falls behind, your opponents are fired up, the clock is ticking and it dawns on you for the first time, ‘Oh, my God, this can't be happening.’”

Why it fits: Now we’re really starting to dig deep into the dark depths of Democratic despair.  Do I even need to say anything here?

#1. The Stomach Punch

Simmons’ Definition: “Any roller-coaster game that ends with (A) an opponent making a pivotal (sometimes improbable) play or (B) one of your guys failing in the clutch. ... Usually ends with fans filing out after the game in stunned disbelief, if they can even move at all. ... Always haunting, sometimes scarring.”

Why it fits: This is #1 because it not only captures the emotion of the final “this can’t be happening” days of the race, but because it encompasses the entire timeline of the health reform battle—a true political roller coaster ride if there ever was one.  We started with such promise, watching entranced on a frigid but hope-filled January morning as a young new president called us to “set aside childish things… to choose our better history,” the cold clarity of the bitter air crystallizing the hard but noble work that must now be done.  Swept into power on the promise of reforming America’s health care, economy, and climate, the new president had a 365-electoral vote mandate to carry out his agenda.

But as that agenda launched into action, the roller coaster began, and we felt that our better history might still be some time in the making.  The emotion reached a fever pitch in the August town halls, and liberals felt enraged and defensive over lunatic cries of “death panels,” “rationing,” and “government takeover.”  Frustrated progressives begged the President to abandon bipartisanship, and felt vindicated as each successive “moderate” Republican spurned the President’s open hand.

The President, however, stood firm, and delivered a game-changing speech.  By November, the bill had passed the House, and the Senate was even considering a public option—or not, as liberals again turned their rage toward Joe Lieberman for scuttling it.

Still, Joe played ball on the rest of the bill.  Health care reform was alive, and it had gotten further than at any time before.  With the public option gone, and after some stomach-turning horse-trading, we finally had Lieberman, Mary Landrieu, and Ben Nelson on board.  Filibuster after Republican filibuster failed, and on Christmas Eve, the second chamber passed health reform.  Just reconcile the bills and get them on the President’s desk.  The long, hard-fought slog was nearing its end, and universal health care was finally, inevitably, coming to America.  And with the finish line in sight… the wheels came flying off.  This isn’t happening.

...

Truth be told, I don’t think any one of Simmons’ levels of losing, by itself does justice to the disbelieving despair felt in liberal circles right now, because there’s a unique twist: the Ted Kennedy factor.  Here was universal health care’s most passionate advocate, so close to achieving his life’s work, cut down by a tumor just short of seeing his dream become reality.  Here was the man chosen to replace him—by the people Kennedy had served for forty years—unraveling his life’s work in the final mile.  Even the most rabid Republican has to feel some level of sympathy—even moral uncertainty—over Scott Brown’s stomach punch to a dead man’s last wish.

And to top it off, Massachusetts, alone of all states, already has universal health care!

Is there a sports analogy?  A star player who’d led his team through the playoffs, only to meet with a tragic accident and have to watch from the sidelines (or heaven) as his hapless replacement choked away the chance for greatness?  Texas’s Colt McCoy comes to mind: the winningest quarterback in NCAA history, who had to sit out the 2010 BCS national championship game after pinching a nerve five plays into it.  McCoy was replaced by a true freshman, who showed his inexperience by throwing a crucial interception that was returned for a touchdown with less than 20 seconds left in the first half.

But even that analogy only goes so far.  The freshman at least grew up quickly, and gave Texas two second-half touchdowns.  That’s more than can be said of Martha Coakley’s choke-job.

So it looks like we have no choice but to create a whole new level of losing based on recent events: The Choakley.

Definition: When a team’s star player is injured in the final game of his career, either (A) in a championship game in which the player’s team has a big lead, or (B) after a long playoff run but before the championship game, in which that player’s team is heavily favored… and that player’s replacement proceeds to throw away the game through sheer ineptitude.  As the other team chips away, the fans watch the jumbotron in dismay, as the injured star watches helplessly from the sidelines as his work unravels.  It’s not just the loss that gets you, but that the injury’s arrival at the last minute, rather than any skill on the part of the other team, is what led to the defeat—and that the star player will never get another shot.  Double points if the replacement player was a late season trade from a team with which he had previously won a championship.

Where does The Choakley rank in Simmons’ levels of losing?  I’d put it at #2—right behind the 1986 World Series.  But I could be persuaded otherwise.  After all, the 1986 loss has been exorcised, twice, albeit 18 and 21 years later.  Let’s just hope Ted Kennedy’s wish doesn’t have to wait that long. All I can say is, I'm glad I have health insurance.