The next plot twist

The news from Massachusetts is truly shocking, and can best be summed up as a tragic loss for the American people. But enough about the death of legendary crime novelist Robert B. Parker.

Elsewhere in Massachusetts news, we now have a former nude Cosmo model taking Ted Kennedy's Senate seat and imperiling the cause of his life. This is precisely why so many of us are political junkies - because, hey, you just never know.

The big question in Washington, with respect to the health care reform crusdade that hangs in limbo, is what the Democrats do now. Suffice it to say that they have few viable legislative options. Since this is a family blog, I will now borrow the euphemistic wording employed by another novelist, Norman Mailer, in his 1948 debut, The Naked and the Dead:

The Democrats seem to be almost totally fugged.

They can theoretically try to speed up the process by which the House and Senate settle their differences and agree on a reform package; that way, Massachusetts seat-warmer Paul Kirk (the 60th Senate vote for passage) can say Yes, and the final bill can go to President Obama before Republican Scott Brown, the erstwhile state legislator, is formally seated. That would be power politics at its most naked; frankly, that's probably what the Republicans would do in this situation (since they understand power). And the Democrats could convince themselves (indeed, with some evidence, given Democratic candidate Martha Coakley's horrific ineptitude) that the Massachusetts election was not really an up-or-down referendum on health care reform.

But the Democrats have already signaled today that this option is dead; if they had rushed the process to give Kirk the key vote, it would have looked downright tawdry. Let us not forget that the Democratic legislature in Massachusetts changed state law last autumn in order to install Kirk as a Senate seat-warmer and thus insure a 60th Democratic vote. So they've gamed the system once already. And now that Scott Brown has won a decisive victory, by five percentage points, in a high-turnout election...well, allow me to quote an alleged sage with whom I am well acquainted. That would be me, writing here nine days ago: "If the Democrats can't win an election in a state that hasn't sent a Republican to the Senate since 1972, if indeed the most motivated voters turn out to be opponents of health reform, then seat-warmer Kirk has no business casting the 60th Yes vote in favor of health reform. If Kirk and the Democrats want to invoke the will of the people, they really should earn it first."

A second option would be to pass health reform via "budget reconciliation," since this process would require only 51 Senate votes. But it would be a parliamentary mess not worth explaining in detail here. The basic rule is that only fiscal issues can be enacted this way, which means that some of the key reform provisions (sweated over for most of 2009) would probably have to be jettisoned at the insistence of the Senate parliamentarian (who would thus become the most powerful person in America, as well as a new target for abuse hurled by denizens of the left and right). And voters who are already frustrated by congressional gimmicry would only become moreso.

Really, the only decent Democratic option is quite readily available: The House can simply agree to pass the Senate version - heck, why not vote on it this week - and the whole thing can then be sent to Obama for his signature. This is procedurally legit; this way, health reform wouldn't have to go back to the Senate for any more votes (where moderates like Evan Bayh and Blanche Lincoln, both up for re-election in '10, might bail out anyway).

The problems with this option, however, are both institutional and political. The House hates playing second fiddle to the Senate, and there are provisions in the Senate bill that many House Democrats oppose; pro-labor liberals don't like the proposed tax on expensive health insurance plans, and anti-abortion Democrats don't like the Senate language on their pet issue. Moreover, there are no guarantees at this point that a majority of House Democrats would even agree to vote Yes one more time on the floor; it's possible that a fair number of moderates from swing districts might be too spooked by the Massachusetts results to stick with Obama one more time.

And yet...the Democrats really have no alternative but to enact something. They're too far in to back out.

If they now abandon health reform, after seven fitful decades, they will lose politically at both ends of the spectrum. Since they're already on record, in both chambers, as having voted Yes on health reform, a retreat at this point would give the Republicans a two-fer message: "Democrats engineered a socialist takeover of the health care system - until they flip-flopped! They were for a takeover until they were against it!" And the Democratic base would simply stay home on the '10 election day for its own reasons - having become convinced that it doesn't pay to elect large Democratic majorities, since those majorities clearly lack the cajones to get anything done.

The only viable alternative for Democrats is to persevere and stick to their policy convictions (thus keeping faith with their base), and remind themselves that Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush stuck to theirs even when public opinion was against them (Bush, especially, persevered on his ambitious Medicare drug prescription bill in December 2003 even though only 32 percent of the general public, and only 26 percent of seniors, supported it). It would better for Democrats to have something affirmative to show for their efforts, to campaign this year as the party that (in the face of Republican opposition) barred insurance companies from dropping sick people, that barred insurance companies from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, and that extended health coverage to millions who lacked it before. This political option might not work either, but it's surely more attractive than the fetal position.

What happens next is probably something that not even Robert B. Parker could have plotted.