On Saturday night, just after Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) secured enough votes to begin debate on Obamacare, Democrats were beaming — and all I could think about was May 21, 2007. That was the day Reid successfully ushered another monstrosity deemed too big to fail onto the floor: comprehensive immigration reform. A month later, that bill, ridiculed and riddled by amendments, lay lifeless, never to see a final vote. Obamacare, beware.
Reid’s amnesty bill failed for many reasons, ideological as well as tactical. Too much, too fast, too soon was the general consensus amongst its opponents. Like Obamacare, it was the baby bill of a president (Bush) slipping in the polls. It was supposed to be “historic.” And it had some spotty support from Republican senators (John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and others). But when it came time for Reid to cobble together the necessary 60 votes to move toward final passage, only 46 senators backed the motion.
Reid surely remembers who abandoned him at the last minute. In fact, it’s the same group that’s tormenting him now: Sen. Ben Nelson (D., Neb.), Sen. Mary Landrieu (D., La.), and Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, a moderate Republican. All three voted to start debate on immigration reform, then voted against ending the debate — effectively killing the bill. Walking the tightrope of the political center, not helping Harry, is still these folks’ goal.
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Reid, after ponying up $300 million to Landrieu (
via Medicaid benefits for Louisiana) this past weekend, got her support for the vote to open debate. Nelson is a different story. He backed Reid in May 2007 to open debate over amnesty, then, over the ensuing month, even after personal calls from President Bush, decided to abandon it. “The bill is not only hopelessly flawed, it is unsalvageable,” Nelson told the
New York Times that June. “We have to start over.”
Reid should be worried. Over the weekend, Nelson was back at it, making similar noise over Obamacare. On ABC’s
This Week, he told host George Stephanopoulos that if ending debate on Reid’s health-care bill, as is, were proposed, he would have voted “not to end debate. I would have voted no on a cloture vote to end debate. . . . I would not let it get off the floor.”
Collins, along with her fellow Maine GOP moderate Sen. Olympia Snowe, has also hedged on whether she’d support Obamacare for months now. Many Democrats have whispered that Collins could be persuaded to vote with them. They thought that with immigration, too, of course, only to be stood up. That time, Collins, worriedly looking toward her 2008 reelection campaign, abandoned Reid at the last minute, saying that she didn’t think that “the bill struck the right balance.” Look for Snowe, up for reelection in 2012, to do the same.
Once the Senate reconvenes on November 30, Reid will be back at the same game: keeping together his 60-member caucus in order to have any chance of passing health reform. It won’t be easy. In order to preserve the underlying bill, Reid and friends will have to vote down some amendments they find agreeable. If Democrats bicker and break up over amendments, Obamcare is doomed.
