A coalition of corporate groups will spend between 4 and 10 million dollars in the weeks ahead to stop the Democratic health care reform package. As John D. McKinnon and Brody Williams explain in their Wall St. Journal article this morning,

The business coalition, Employers for a Healthy Economy, said it would run between $4 million and $10 million of ads targeting the districts of several dozen Democratic lawmakers, carrying the message that the bill would cause job losses. The ads are being funded by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other trade associations that represent a broad swath of industry, from health insurers and manufacturers to construction, retail and distribution companies.
The burst of TV advertising adds to the total of more than $200 million spent on ads last year, making the health-care debate the largest single advocacy campaign ever, according to Campaign Media Analysis Group, which tracks issue advertising. Both sides in the debate spent about equally on ads last year, according to Evan Tracey, the nonpartisan group’s president.

Sobering numbers for health care reform supporters. Their opponents plan to flood the airwaves with attacks against reform. And the ads will be targeted, as the authors report:

One group opposing the legislation, Americans for Prosperity, is targeting about 21 House districts around the country with $350,000 in TV and radio ads, as well as with rallies at lawmakers’ district offices. Still another conservative group, the American Future Fund, said this week it had launched TV ads targeting 18 congressional districts.

Unions, Health Care for America Now, the AARP and other pro-reform groups will struggle to match that investment, which may end up being substantially more than $10 million, if my hunch is right. That’s quite a change from last summer when insurers were running ads supporting bipartisan reform.
Next week tea party organizers plan to flood the halls of Congress with 1,000 protestors, no doubt attracting 24-7 coverage from Fox TV, wingnut radio and whatever msm outlets get hustled into providing over-coverage. It would be good if progressive supporters of HCR were ready with an impressive counter-protest, bearing signs with messages like the three in TDS’s “Noteworthy” box above, plus some version of E. J. Dionne’s soundbite, like “Don’t let a phony argument about process derail needed reform.” Also needed are messages and creative ads making a positive pitch about the good changes reforms will secure.
Of course the quality of the ad campaigns may determine their impact, as much or more than money and saturation. Democrats have the advantage of reasonable policy, but Republicans have the edge in message discipline and air wave media resources. It will require some creative media strategy to neutralize the GOP media campaign over the next two weeks. This DNC ad is an excellent start.

One of the more interesting ongoing spectacles this year has been the crashing and burning of Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, the once invincible political titan who now appears destined to lose, perhaps badly, a U.S. Senate primary to conservative Tea Party favorite Marco Rubio. Initially, Rubio was considered more or less a nuisance candidate who would keep Crist from straying too far off the conservative reservation. Now, according to a new PPP poll of Florida Republicans, Rubio is trouncing Crist 60-28.
Echoing earlier complaints among Florida Republicans that Crist should have just run for re-election, there’s been talk that the heavily tanned incumbent might switch to the governor’s race (qualifying doesn’t end until April 30). Others have suggested he should get some revenge on conservatives by staying in the Senate race but running as an independent. At 538.com today, Nate Silver explores these alternatives, and concludes that Crist should probably either hang it up or run for the Senate as an indie, assuming he’s not interested in a future in the GOP. Turns out switching to the governor’s race isn’t promising:

The same PPP poll that found Crist trailing Rubio by 32 points also found him trailing Bill McCollum, the leading Republican candidate for governor, by 14. That’s not quite as bad a deficit to overcome, but it doesn’t account for the additional annoyance voters might feel if Crist switched races, which could come across as entitled and presumptuous. In addition, the general election could get tricky, as Crist’s approval ratings are tepid and as Democratic candidate Alex Sink — although now trailing McCollum in most polls — is considered a decent candidate.

On the other hand, says Nate, some polls have shown Crist running reasonably well as an indie against Rubio and likely Democratic Senate candidate Kendrick Meek, essentially creating a three-way tie.
Either “switch” by Crist, it’s clear, would be good news for Florida Democrats, giving them a better chance in November while promoting GOP ideological warfare.
But Charlie probably owns it to his dwindling band of friends in the GOP to make up his mind soon. In neighboring Georgia, the news that U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss and Gov. Sonny Perdue are hosting an Atlanta fundraiser for Crist has not gone over very well in Georgia Republican circles. If Crist is perceived as double-crossing Florida Republicans, he will become truly radioactive for all who have touched him.

This item is cross-posted from The New Republic.
As we all understand, Republicans are about to have a pretty good election in November. Much of the GOP excitement revolves around congressional races that could unseat “red-state” Democrats who won during the 2006 or 2008 cycles, along with a number of incumbents (some of whom have decided to retire) who have been around much longer. Ground zero for the Republican tsunami is, of course, the Deep South, where in some areas John McCain did better in 2008 than George W. Bush did in 2004, and where every available indicator shows the president to be very unpopular among white voters.
But beneath this storyline, some odd and counterintuitive things are going on. In three Deep South states, Georgia, Alabama, and South Carolina, Democrats have a decent chance of retaking long-lost governorships, in part because of infighting among Republican candidates, and in part because Republican rule in those states has not been terribly successful or popular. It’s far too early to make predictions, but it’s possible that we’re in for a repeat of the astounding gubernatorial Trifecta that Democrats pulled off in those same three states in 1998. That event confounded widespread assessments that the South had become a one-party GOP region, and it could happen again, in even more unlikely circumstances.
Our own appraisal begins in Georgia, with one of the surprise winners of 1998, former Governor Roy Barnes. Barnes lost his reelection bid in 2002 to Sonny Perdue, a party-switching state senator, despite the power of incumbency and a huge financial advantage. Since then, Barnes has regularly admitted his mistakes. And, amazingly enough, in the latest Georgia gubernatorial poll, he’s running ahead of every single Republican candidate.
Meanwhile, Georgia Republicans, who have dominated state politics since 2002, are having some serious problems with their own gubernatorial bench. The consistent frontrunner in the polls, longtime insurance commissioner John Oxendine, is awash in ethics allegations about contributions from the insurance companies that he is responsible for regulating. His record is so blatantly bad that none other than Erick Erickson, the Georgia-based proprietor of the nationally influential, hard-core conservative web site RedState, has said he’d vote for Barnes if Oxendine is the GOP nominee.
Rather pathetically, the alternative to Oxendine and the favorite of some party insiders is Representative Nathan Deal of Georgia’s Ninth District (like Perdue, a party-switcher), who recently said he would resign his congressional seat after a health care vote to concentrate on his gubernatorial campaign. As it happens, Deal’s resignation managed to short-circuit a House Ethics Committee investigation into a no-bid state auto-salvage contract that was awarded to a company which Deal controls. The insider buzz in Atlanta is that Deal was motivated to resign, in part, because of panic among Georgia Republican pooh-bahs who worried that Oxendine would walk away with the gubernatorial nomination on name id alone.
The rest of the Republican gubernatorial hopefuls are struggling as well. The entire party, and several of the gubernatorial candidates, were tainted by association with disgraced former House Speaker Glenn Richardson, who was forced to resign after a lurid sex-and-lobbying scandal. The one candidate who seems ethically starchy, Secretary of State Karen Handel, has struggled to raise the money necessary to win, and also suffers from the perception that she’s the unpopular Sonny Perdue’s chosen successor.
All these Republican problems could eventually fade, and Roy Barnes must also navigate a Democratic primary against Attorney General Thurbert Baker, a law-‘n-order conservative who is one of the nation’s longest-serving African American statewide elected officials (as well as two other lesser but credible opponents). Nevertheless at present, Barnes—or Baker, if he could somehow upset Barnes—looks entirely viable for November.
Next door in Alabama, you’d think that the Democratic gubernatorial frontrunner, Congressman Artur Davis, wouldn’t stand a chance. He’s a member of the much-hated United States Congress; he’s African American; he’s a close personal friend of Barack Obama; and he’s frequently been tagged, like the president, as an Ivy League-educated, twenty-first-century–style black politician. But the sparse public polling available shows Davis in a very strong position for the general election, assuming that he dispenses with a primary challenge from state agriculture commissioner Ron Sparks, who’s been struggling to raise money. Davis, who has long nursed gubernatorial ambitions, carefully tailored his congressional record to Alabama public opinion: He voted against health care reform in the House, and he was also the first Congressional Black Caucus member (and, for that matter, the first one on the Ways and Means Committee) to call for Charlie Rangel to step aside from his powerful chairmanship.
Meanwhile, there is no real frontrunner in the Republican gubernatorial primary, which bids fair to become an ideological flame war. Back in 2002, the “establishment” candidate, state Senator Bradley Byrne, made the fatal mistake of voting for a-tax reform initiative that was soundly defeated in an emphatic expression of Alabamians’ mistrust of government. Tim James, son of former conservative Democratic and Republican Governor Fob James, was one of the main opponents of that initiative, and he will bring it up constantly. Meanwhile Christian Right warhorse Roy Moore, the famous “Ten Commandments Judge,” is actually running second to Byrne in early polls. All of the dynamics in the race will pull the GOP candidates to the hard-right, while Artur Davis continues to occupy the political center; and his candidacy will almost certainly boost African American turnout to near-2008 levels. That means anything could happen in November.
South Carolina is often thought of as the most Republican of Southern states. But Mark Sanford, the disgraced incumbent governor, has complicated his party’s prospects. Meanwhile, an ideological civil war is brewing that reflects the growing tension between the state’s two Republican senators, right-wing bomb thrower Jim DeMint and the more moderate Lindsey Graham (Graham, long suspect among home-state conservatives for his friendship with John McCain and his occasional bipartisanship, has recently been formally censured by two of South Carolina’s county GOP organizations for a variety of sins). As in Georgia and Alabama, the Republican gubernatorial field is a mess: Nobody is a frontrunner and all the candidates are stampeding to the hard right. And I do mean hard right. In a sign of the times, Lieutenant Governor Andre Bauer, who has few friends in the state’s Republican establishment, delivered a speech comparing recipients of subsidized school lunches to “stray animals” who should no longer be fed unconditionally. While he took a few shots from fellow Republicans for his indiscreet language, nobody disputed, and some praised, his basic premise that any form of public assistance corrupts its recipients and should come with some sort of reciprocal obligation.
The frontrunners in early polls are Bauer and Attorney General Henry McMaster. Upstate Congressman Gresham Barrett, who must overcome the opprobrium of voting for TARP, is close behind. Meanwhile, Sanford’s protégé, state Representative Nikki Haley (who was even endorsed by the governor’s ex-wife), is trying to push the campaign hard right by opposing any expenditure of federal stimulus dollars in this high-unemployment state. At a recent candidate forum, when the rivals were pushed to call themselves “DeMint Republicans” or “Graham Republicans,” Bauer and Haley flatly identified with DeMint, while McMasters and Barrett dodged the question.
On the Democratic side, a Rasmussen poll in December showed the front-running Democrat, State School Superintendent Jim Rex, actually beating Bauer and running within single digits against other GOP candidates. (State Representative Vincent Sheheen is also a credible Democratic candidate). Again, anything could happen, but the assumption that Republicans have a lock on this state’s elections is as dubious as the same assumption back in 1998.
So, at a time when Democrats are despairing of good news, it’s important to understand that the donkey isn’t quite dead, even in the Deep South. There are consequences to Republican extremism and malfeasance in office. And, when GOP candidates battle for first place on the crazy train of contemporary conservatism, it’s Democrats who stand to benefit.

The Hill has a new staff survey of Democratic House of Reps members positions on the Democratic health care reform package (all Republicans expected to vote “No” as of this writing). Although there is some overlap, this list is substantially different from Chris Bowers list, which J.P. Green flagged here. ( Y) denotes ‘voted yes in November’, while asterisk denotes ‘voted for Stupak amendment in November.’ All unnamed Dems are on record in favor of the HCR package.
Firm no
Dan Boren (Okla.) *
Bobby Bright (Ala.) *
Artur Davis (Ala.) *
Larry Kissell (N.C.)
Dennis Kucinich (Ohio)
Frank Kratovil (Md.)
Walt Minnick (Idaho)
Collin Peterson (Minn.) *
Mike Ross (Ark.) *
Ike Skelton (Mo.) *
Gene Taylor (Miss.) *
Leaning No
Michael Arcuri (N.Y.) (Y)
Undecided
Brian Baird (Wash.)
Marion Berry (Ark.) * (Y)
John Boccieri (Ohio) *
Dennis Cardoza (Calif.) * (Y)
Kathleen Dahlkemper (Pa.) * (Y)
Steve Driehaus (Ohio) * (Y)
Bart Gordon (Tenn.) *
Mary Jo Kilroy (Ohio) (Y)
Ron Kind (Wis.) (Y)
Dan Maffei (N.Y.) (Y)
Scott Murphy (N.Y.)
Solomon Ortiz (Texas) * (Y)
Tom Perriello (Va.) * (Y)
Nick Rahall (W.Va.) * (Y)
John Spratt (S.C.) * (Y)
Bart Stupak (Mich.) * (Y)
John Tanner (Tenn.) *
Leaning Yes
Russ Carnahan (Mo.) (Y)
Jim Oberstar (Minn.) * (Y)
No comment
Mike Doyle (Pa.) * (Y)
Clearly, the situation is very much in flux, hopefully in a good way. The biggest disappointment has to be Dennis Kucinich, who could conceivably become the Republicans’ favorite Democrat as a result of his purist position favoring a strong public option or single-payer reform. All of the undecideds and leaners need phone calls.The toll-free phone number for the Congressional switchboard is 1-866-220-0044.

I have no idea whether the sexual harrassment allegations against Rep. Eric Massa (whose resignation takes effect today) are true or false, and do believe in a presumption of innocence, along with some sympathy for the apparent condition of his health. But there’s no way around the fact that this once-proud progressive Democrat is now flipping over to the Other Side at warp speed.
After owning up to vaguely described misbehavior initially, he’s suddenly alleging a grand conspiracy by the House Democratic Leadership to cook up sexual harrassment charges in order to force him out of office and get a tad closer to passing final health reform legislation. And tomorrow he’s going to spend an entire hour telling this lurid tale on Glenn Beck’s show.
So before you can blink, among conservatives Massa has gone from being a much-derided symbol of Democratic corruption, and/or “the Democrat Mark Foley,” to being a victim of vicious socialists, or even perhaps of a gay cabal.
Something tells me Massa is not much going to like his new friends. One old friend, the ever-honest Chris Bowers of OpenLeft, had this to say about Massa’s flip-out:

Act Blue pages which I co-managed supported Eric Massa in 2006 and 2008 to the tune of nearly $100,000. Further, before these charges, I was going to help him win re-election no matter his vote on health care. However, there are good reasons to be suspicious of his actions since Friday. And frankly, while I was very proud of it until Friday of last week, I don’t feel very good about my past activism for Eric Massa now. No matter the veracity of his contradictory charges, he is not coming across very well right now.

I doubt an hour with Glenn Beck is going to help.

Here’s something to tuck away in your files on both health care reform and 2012 presidential aspirant Mitt Romney, from Tim Noah at Slate (via Jon Chait). Looking at Romney’s new pre-campaign book, Noah observes:

Romney’s discussion of health reform is, from a partisan perspective, comically off-message. (How could he know what today’s GOP message would be? He probably finished writing the book months ago.) Remove a little anti-Obama boilerplate and Romney’s views become indistinguishable from the president’s. They even rely on the same MIT economist! At the Massachusetts bill’s signing ceremony, Romney relates in his book, the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., quipped, “When Mitt Romney and Ted Kennedy are celebrating the same piece of legislation, it means only one thing: One of us didn’t read it.”

Noah goes on to mix up some Obama and Romney quotes on health care reform, and challenges the reader to say which is which. Can’t be done.
Back in January, I predicted that Romney’s sponsorship of health care reform in Massachusetts might turn out to be a disabling handicap in a 2012 presidential race, given the shrillnesss of conservative rhetoric about features in Obama’s proposal that are also in Romney’s–most notably, the individual mandate.
Something happened since then, of course, which has been of great value to Romney in protecting his highly vulnerable flank on health reform: Scott Brown, another supporter of RomneyCare in Massachusetts, became the maximum national GOP hero and set off to Washington to try to wreck Obama’s plans. That meant that not one, but two major Republican pols would be promoting ludicrous distinctions between RomneyCare and ObamaCare as though they were actually vast and principled.
But I can’t see this illogical brush-off as working forever. If the Mittster does crank up another presidential campaign, fresh media attention will be devoted to his record and “philosophy” on health care. And more importantly, Romney’s rivals in a presidential race won’t for a moment give him a mulligan on the issue the GOP has defined as all-important. Mitt’s “socialism” in Massachusetts will eventually re-emerge as a big, big problem for him, and arguments that it was just state-level “socialism” won’t quite cut it in a Republican Party that’s moved well to the Right since the last time he ran for president. Before it’s over, they’ll make it sound like he’s the reincarnation of Nelson Rockefeller, money and all.

Beginning about half way through this Meet the Press clip, WaPo columnist E. J. Dionne chews Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) a brand new one. Dionne underscores several key points about the use of reconciliation exceptionally-well. He points out that Republicans have used it on many occasions for what Hatch calls “sweeping social legislation.” He notes that reconciliation would only be used for a portion of HCR. Then he brings out the point he made in his last column (flagged here by TDS) that it’s wrong to let “a phony argument about process get in the way of health coverage for 30 million Americans.” Dionne’s response provides an excellent debate template for health care reform advocates.

In his OpenLeft post, “Yes, Congressional Progressives won major public option concessions in the health reform bill,” Chris Bowers has a potent antidote for a defeatist meme that has popped up here and there on the progressive blogosphere: that progressive activists got rolled, and consequently, the Democratic HCR package ain’t worth spit. To which Bowers responds:

…That entire line of “argument” is just demonstrably false, and either intellectually dishonest or blinded by egregious cynicism…Here are two huge public option concessions that ended up in the Senate bill as concessions to progressive activists and members of Congress:
1. Four million additional Americans covered by Medicaid
Back in July, the health reform proposal in the House (PDF, p. 17) expanded Medicaid coverage by 11 million compared to current law. In an attempt to win over the 60 House Progressives who demanded a public option tied to Medicare rates, Speaker Pelosi increased the Medicaid coverage in the health reform proposal to 15 million more than current law. This was done entirely as a sweetner to Progressives, most of whom come from districts with a disproportionately large number of constituents who would be eligible for Medicaid expansion. Furthermore, even though it was accomplished through a slightly different policy means, that expansion of Medicaid to 15 million more people than current law remained in the Senate bill (CBO report, PDF, page 20)
The House Progressives who signed the infamous July 31st letter demanding a public option tied to Medicare rates did not just fold and walk away with nothing. They got four million, uninsured, low-income Americans public health insurance. They were additionally given a chance by the leadership to whip the entire House caucus on a Medicare +5% public option in the insurance exchange. They came close, but failed to reach 218. That was also a concession they won from the July letter.
2. Twenty-five million additional Americans provided public health care
On December 16th, Senator Bernie Sanders was still threatening to vote against cloture on the Senate health reform bill. Three days later he was on board, but only after securing public health care (not health insurance, health care) for 25,000,000 million, largely low-income Americans:

To amplify the latter point, Bowers flags the following from Sanders’ website:

WASHINGTON, December 19 – A $10 billion investment in community health centers, expected to go to $14 billion when Congress completes work on health care reform legislation, was included in a final series of changes to the Senate bill unveiled today.
The provision, which would provide primary care for 25 million more Americans, was requested by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
He said the additional resources will help bring about a revolution in primary health care in America and create new or expanded health centers in an additional 10,000 communities. The provision would also provide loan repayments and scholarships through the National Health Service Corps to create an additional 20,000 primary care doctors, dentists, nurse practitioners, physician assistants and mental health professionals.
Very importantly, Sanders also said the provision would save Medicaid tens of billions of dollars by keeping patients out of emergency rooms and hospitals by providing primary care when then needed it.

Bowers adds that “This was won as a direct concession for Sanders’ vote on cloture,” and

…Given a chance to pass a bill that is the largest expansion of public health insurance and health care in 45 years, and when netroots progressive activism campaigns played vital roles in improving those portions of the bill, you’re damn right I want to it passed.
We were fighting to expand public health insurance. We got public health insurance for 15,000,000, uninsured low-income Americans, and we got public health care for 25,000,000 low-income million Americans. Much of what has won was directly the result of the public option campaign. And yes, we are still fighting for even more, no matter the odds. No matter the outcome of that campaign, however, if the health reform bill passes, then the public option campaign was a success.

Bowers expanded his argument with a 9-point rebuttal in his post yesterday, “The complete list of ways progressives strengthened health reform legislation,” also a tonic for checking cynicism and despair about HCR among progressives.

This item is cross-posted from Progressive Fix.
For all the talk about the Tea Party Movement and its demands that America’s political system be turned upside down, it’s always been a bit hard to get a fix on what, exactly, these conservative activists want Washington to do.
To solve this puzzle, it’s worth taking a look at the Contract From America process — a project of the Tea Party Patriots organization, designed to create a bottoms-up, open-source agenda that activists can embrace when they gather for their next big moment in the national media sun on April 15. The 21-point agenda laid out for Tea Partiers to refine into a 10-point “Contract” is, to put it mildly, a major Blast from the Past, featuring conservative Republican chestnuts dating back decades.
There’s term limits, naturally. There are a couple of “transparency” proposals, such as publication of bill texts well before votes. But more prominent are fiscal “ideas” very long in the tooth. You got a balanced budget constitutional amendment, which ain’t happening and won’t work. You got fair tax/flat tax, the highly regressive concept flogged for many years by a few talk radio wonks, that has never been taken seriously even among congressional Republicans. You’ve got Social Security and Medicare privatization (last tried by George W. Bush in 2005) and education vouchers. You’ve got scrapping all federal regulations, preempting state and local regulations, and maybe abolishing some federal departments (an idea last promoted by congressional Republicans in 1995). You’ve got abolition of the “death tax” (i.e., the tax on very large inheritances). And you’ve got federal spending caps, which won’t actually roll back federal spending because they can’t be applied to entitlements.
My favorite on the list is a proposal that in Congress “each bill…identify the specific provision of the Constitution that gives Congress the power to do what the bill does.” This illustrates the obliviousness or hostility of Tea Partiers to the long string of Supreme Court decisions, dating back to the 1930s, that give Congress broad policymaking powers under the 14th Amendment and the Spending and Commerce Clauses. More broadly, it shows the literalism of Tea Party “original intent” views of the Constitution; if wasn’t spelled out explicitly by the Founders it’s unconstitutional.
We are often told that the Tea Party Movement represents some sort of disenfranchised “radical middle” in America that rejects both major parties’ inability to get together and solve problems. As the “Contract From America” shows, that’s totally wrong. At least when it comes to policy proposals, these folks are the hard-right wing of the Republican Party, upset that Barry Goldwater’s agenda from 1964 has never been implemented.

The big hurdle ahead in enacting health care reform is House approval of the Senate HCR bill, which the Administration hopes to pass by March 18. Says OpenLeft‘s Chris Bowers, who tracks the House and Senate tallies: “The vote count is not a rosy one right now.”
538.com‘s Nate Silver believes that “the Senate should fairly easily have 50 votes for reconciliation” and agrees that the House vote is the more problematic challenge:

The math on holding those 217 House votes was never very easy for Nancy Pelosi and its not clear that it’s gotten any easier. If everyone voted the same way today that they did in November, the bill would pass 217-215. However, two previous yes votes — Bart Stupak and the Republican Anh “Joseph” Cao — are almost certainly to be lost, whereas nobody who voted against the bill before has yet affirmed that they’ll switch to vote for it. That makes the starting point 215-217 against.
…My head says yes — Pelosi will squeak this through — while my gut frankly says no…I’d hesitate to call the bill a favorite to pass.

Bowers has a list of about two dozen House members thought to be possible swing voters, broken down into three categories:

…The 431 current members of the House voted 217-214 in favor of the health reform bill in November. Here are the key switches, and wavering Representatives, so far:
* November “yes” votes presumed to be “no” because of the Stupak bloc (9): Cao (LA-02); Costello (IL-12); Dahlkemper (PA-03); Driehaus (OH-03); Kanjorski (PA-11); Kaptur (OH-09); Murtha (PA-12)[deceased]; Oberstar (MN-08); Ortiz (TX-27); Stupak (MI-01)
* November “no” votes publically wavering now (13): Altmire (PA-04), Baird (WA-03); Boucher (VA-09); Boyd (FL-02); Gordon (TN-06); Kosmas (FL-24); Markey (CO-04); McMahon (NY-13); Minnick (ID-01); S. Murphy (NY-20); Glen Nye (VA-02); Ross (AR-04); Tanner (TN-08)
* November “yes” votes publically wavering now (3): Arcuri (NY-24), Grijalva (AZ-07); Schrader (OR-05)
That’s a pretty tight squeeze. The House leadership will need virtually all of the wavering “no” votes from November listed above to vote yes this time around. And the only way to appeal to that group is through the reconciliation fix bill, since the Senate bill must be passed as is in order for President Obama to sign it into law.

Reasons for the March 18 deadline include the President’s upcoming international trip and the onset of “March Madness,” regarded as a constituent distraction. This will likely be the pivotal vote in enacting a decent health care bill, and we can imagine the lobbying pressure the insurance industry will be putting on these House members in the weeks ahead. Much depends on them hearing from progressive constituents and organizations in impressive numbers.

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