Healthcare summit: winning the battle, losing the war

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As the second half gets underway (I enjoyed that performance by The Who, didn’t you?), let’s revisit what we said a few hours ago about winners and losers today. We wrote: “It’s possible both sides can walk away with what they’re looking for — which isn’t always the same as winning, of course.”

Four hours in, it appears both sides are going to get what they wanted. Democrats will argue Republicans are obstructionists who aren’t willing to engage on healthcare reform even, as the president has painstakingly outlined, when there is common ground. And if they don’t want to work with us, they’ll say, we don’t have to work with them. Hence: the stage will be set for reconciliation in the Senate, where Democrats can pass a healthcare bill with 51 votes. (It won’t be a sweeping bill; that’s already been passed by the Senate in December. It’s more likely it will revise the Senate bill that will soon be passed by the House.)

Republicans will argue (indeed, they already are), that Democrats and the White House never acted in good faith in setting up this summit, that Obama ruined any chance for a new day on healthcare when he released his own blueprint this week mirroring the existing Democratic bills, and that by not being willing to junk those bills and start over, Obama was never serious about engaging Republicans.

Fine. So that’s where things stand.

But even if Democrats make a case for moving forward with reconciliation, that won’t be the same as convincing a skeptical public that this particular bill is desired. Look at this recent CNN poll, which found that 25% of people questioned say Congress should pass legislation similar to the bills passed by both chambers, with 48% saying lawmakers should work on an entirely new bill and a quarter saying Congress should stop all work on healthcare reform.

Such is the box that Democrats are in: A majority of Americans want reform, but not this reform, necessarily.

Will those feelings change after this summit? Recent history suggests they won’t. So indeed, Obama could emerge from the summit having, in a sense, owned the room on healthcare, rebutting every Republican argument with some solid facts.

But that may not make what may lies ahead any more popular with the American public. We may not truly be able to judge the winners and losers from today until 2010, 2012, or beyond.

-- James Oliphant