Wake Me When It's Over

I think I know why the movement to stop the health care bill has faded away... because the news coverage of it has become sooooooooo BORING.

When things were happening fast and furious and we were finding out about all the hidden taxes and regulations and mandates in the House bill, it was exciting. The tea party protests and town hall debates were exciting and provided all the drama one could need to stay interested in what was going on. Now that they're debating the bill in Congress, well, there's no drama. The news media now needs to invent drama, so for the past two months there has been non-stories in the news about "will they get enough votes" or something like that.

The fact is it was a foregone conclusion that they would get enough votes in the House to pass the bill, and it was going to be the exact same bill that drew all the protests over the summer. Nancy Pelosi knew she had the votes all along, because all she needed to do was twist enough arms and threaten enough seats. It's simple: if you're a wavering moderate Democrat and Madame Speaker doesn't have her 218 votes yet, you vote for the bill or you have a liberal challenger next spring, one that will have Pelosi's endorsement and a ton of campaign cash from MoveOn.org and their minions. The Democrats do the same thing they attacked the Republicans for doing when they were in power, only they do it much more secretly now.

And now we get treated to the same manufactured drama in the Senate. It's gotten so bad that we had "drama" over whether or not they'd get the 60 votes needed to open debate. This too was a foregone conclusion. Democrats were not going to sink their own legislation this quickly; it would hurt them BIG at the polls next year. Beyond that, Joe Lieberman is already getting threatened with another big-money liberal challenger if he votes against this (although he did beat the last one). So we'll have our debate, moderates will take umbrage with some provisions but they'll fall in line. If they don't, there have been rumblings since the beginning that Harry Reid will declare "reconciliation" and then he'll only need 51 votes instead of 60. And even if some of the things that many people object to get taken out of this bill in order to pass it, they'll magically reappear after the House-Senate conference committee gets done with it. The same thing happened after the House moderates supposedly watered down the House bill... all the things the House Finance Committee's Blue Dogs objected to suddenly reappeared in the final House bill.

Maybe this is being overly pessimistic, but I've said it since January: the Democrats hold all the cards. They answer any opposition with "we won, get out of our way", and no matter how many protests happen, no matter how many times people are exhorted to call their congressmen or senators, they've only needed their side to fall in line. The only real way we can stop these guys is at the ballot box, and that won't be easy with the Republican Party in such a state of disarray. But I'm sure we can look forward to much more "will they have the votes" from the media for the next couple weeks until the final Senate vote. After all, they do need to keep us watching.