BLUE OR GREEN?:

For Democrats, A Wake-Up Call (David Von Drehle, November 26, 2003, Washington Post)

The wily and experienced Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) had his pocket picked. It was humiliating.

"It's an odd dynamic," said Eric Hauser, a strategist on the party's liberal wing. "When I came to Washington in the mid-'80s, the idea that Democrats ran things was just like the sun coming up in the east. Now, with each passing year, Democrats are less relevant."

Kennedy's experience with the Medicare bill was repeatedly cited as both pivotal and highly instructive. Earlier this year, he joined with Republican sponsors to get a prescription drug benefit moving, hopeful that the details would become more to his liking during the conference to iron out differences between the House and Senate versions.

"What Kennedy didn't realize is that the tide has changed," said James A. Thurber, an expert on congressional politics at American University. Instead, GOP leaders shut Kennedy out of the conference, stiffened the spines of their own party and enticed Breaux, Baucus and a few others with a few targeted tweaks to the bill.

Is this a sign of resignation to a long stretch in the minority? "Maybe," Thurber said. "These interest groups and some lawmakers may already be thinking there will be more Republicans in the Senate and the House next Congress and Bush will be reelected. And they think this is the best they're going to get."

Medicare Monstrosity (E. J. Dionne Jr, November 18, 2003, Washington Post)

The problem is that many conservatives, especially in the House, don't like Medicare as it is. They would prefer a system in which the government guaranteed everyone a certain amount of money that could be used to buy private health insurance. Ending Medicare as we know it is their long-term goal. They call this "expanding choice." [...]

Now, what does any of this have to do with a prescription drug benefit? Good question. If this were only about providing a limited prescription drug benefit, Congress could have debated the best ways to cut up the $400 billion it has allocated for this purpose. The amount covers a little more than a fifth of seniors' drug costs. Logically, this limited sum would have been best used to help the poorest seniors who are not now covered by Medicaid, and the sickest -- those whose drug costs are especially high.

Instead, Republican negotiators, joined by Democratic Sens. John Breaux and Max Baucus, went behind closed doors and decided to use the public's demand for drug coverage as an opening wedge to change Medicare. The shame of it is that Republicans and Democrats in the Senate had already reached a real compromise. The bipartisan proposal, crafted in cooperation with Sen. Ted Kennedy, was inadequate. Yet it was better than this bill. It passed the Senate overwhelmingly because it left the larger Medicare issues open for real debate later.

But House conservatives weren't willing to go that far. They want medical savings accounts, a tax cut for the wealthy in disguise, and they insisted on experiments with privatization.

At some point the question may well become not whether the Democrats are going to be a minority party, but whether they're going to be the minority party. If you're going to be in the minority, why not return to your principles, as Ronald Reagan forced the GOP to do. Yes, Republicans came to accept the New Deal to some degree, but they didn't return to power until they moved far to the Right. No one in the Democratic Party seems really interested in doing something similar and becoming forthrightly the party of big government again. This would seem to set the stage for the rise of a third party, perhaps growing out of the Greens, which would appeal to the faithful by moving Left and, as it became the more serious alternative to the Republicans, eventually force moderate Democrats into the GOP. The Democrats would go the way of the Whigs.

Posted by Orrin Judd at November 26, 2003 11:31 AM