Dems, Reps Skate To A 0-0 Tie

The Morning Joe Rebuttal for February 26th, 2010


Observations:


1) When the teams skate to a 0-0 tie, the Morning Joe show still has to cover it as if it’s news. Mika picked a good day to take off, because what happens is that the show also skates to a zero summation. If you compared and contrasted the Scarborough, Heilemann, Halperin, O’Donnell takes in the 6 am and 8 am hours, you saw little evolution, because there was no thing to progress the thing from a non story to a story.


Every single point in the latest hour - professorial is a dumb criticism, Republicans are due a philosophical difference, snarky or not snarky - was a bronze medallist in the non news category.


2) When I saw Guns and Roses at the LA Coliseum, towards the end of the show, Axl took a victory lap. Anthony Wiener deserves a victory lap after his scathing assault on the Republicans in the House of Representatives. Unfortunately, and Joe Scarborough is on to this, the subsidiary of the health insurance industry in our legislature includes some Democrats and a particularly infuriating Independent. Oh, and the President is still asking the insurers if they like him OK.


While Anthony Wiener couldn’t take the flag and do the lap, at least his understanding of the mechanics of 60 votes empowering those Democrats that are the least likely to govern, and most likely to plan for their retirement ala’ Billy Tauzin, got some more airtime.


What does Bill Frist do for a living these days?


3) Now is the time for hard work. The conversation has been stabilized by the tactic of creating calendar benchmarks like the summit that caused the Republicans to move to a defensive position to be sure they didn’t look like obstructionist buffoons, something they achieved, rather than have this time to take extra Scott Brown related victory laps. So instead of the story being it’s over for Dems and health care, it's health care is on the table, alive and about to pass.


The hard work is to pressure the bill that passes to include the stuff that will make a difference, and systematically remove all the 60 vote related nonsense. All of it.


I’m not happy with Republicans, and that’s a good thing, because they couldn’t make a single thing in their strategy look like progress. So it’s likely the independent voter either won’t be swayed or if he is in his 2010 voting pattern, he will have immediate buyers remorse, setting up the 2012 election cycle as the big rebound and 6 of the 8 Obama years about progress.


But I’m not happy with the Democrats either, I’m on the sidelines waiting for courage, a youth movement, results, and for them to work as hard as possible to remove the shame of a wasted year. The stakes are this, if they don’t show that courage, even if a bill passes but further empowers the insurers rather then stem the inequity in the country’s health care system, it could be 2 more election cycles of wild pointless thrashing as a gerrymandered, fixed primary, broken election system displays it’s incapability to end corrupt influence and enhance progress.


Where’s it going to end?

That’s all for today, see you Monday.