Why Democrats Have Won

Also from Politico’s health-​​care wrapup:

But con­gres­sional Democ­rats always remained remark­ably united on the need to fin­ish the job. In the last month, as Sen­ate Repub­li­cans threw up pro­ce­dural hur­dles and por­trayed the bill as a dan­ger­ous exper­i­ment, Democ­rats emerged as a more cohe­sive unit than when the process began.

“Ulti­mately, every Demo­c­rat from the most lib­eral to the most con­ser­v­a­tive real­ized we had to get a bill, whether they wanted to do health care at the begin­ning or not,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y) after Nel­son, the last hold­out, com­mit­ted his vote last week­end. “Every­body real­ized there was just no option, and nobody wanted to be the last per­son to bring it down.”

This is truly the def­i­n­i­tion of polit­i­cal suc­cess w/​r/​t the sit­u­a­tion in the Sen­ate. Democ­rats — even Joe Lieber­man — were forced to cre­ate a pow­er­ful vot­ing bloc that they aren’t always able to cre­ate when Repub­li­cans are involved in the process. Because they needed una­nim­ity to pass any­thing, they found a way to achieve it.

Despite left-​​wing crit­i­cisms such as WWLBJD, pro­gres­sive Democ­rats com­pro­mised as lit­tle as pos­si­ble when forg­ing the nec­es­sary coali­tion. The key divi­sion in the party — eco­nomic lib­er­als v. eco­nomic cen­trists — was bridged largely with­out sac­ri­fic­ing the social pro­gres­sivism (save for the heated abor­tion ques­tion) that truly char­ac­ter­izes the Democrats.

In that com­pro­mise, Democ­rats found a win­ning strat­egy, and it is one that will per­sist for years to come.

24 December 2009 – 8:29 pm | By Benjamin Daniels | Posted in Politics | Tagged , , | Comments (164)