The legislative push for so-called common ground, together with the health reform process, are indicative of one of the worst ways in which the DC political process and media are skewed to favor conservatives over progressives.
Digby catches Jon Cohn worrying that progressives are pushing too hard on the public option, when that is not the be-all and end-all of health reform:
And yet I confess to a certain ambivalence when I hear, as I frequently do, statements like the one Dean made at the rally. Yes, the public plan is a key element of reform. But it is not the only one.
Just
consider what was going on inside Capitol Hill meeting rooms as Dean
was speaking. Over the past week, leaders of the Senate Finance
Committee have been busy hacking away at their proposed legislation, in
order to bring the total price tag in at under $1 trillion over ten
years. To accomplish this, the committee leaders have proposed cutting
the subsidies that reform will make available to people who have
trouble paying for insurance on their own.
If those cuts end up in the final legislation, fewer people would get assistance and, quite possibly, those that still got assistance wouldn’t get as much. The result would be more uninsured and more underinsured.
And that's not the only major issue in play.
On the abortion issue, Amanda raises valid concerns over what "common ground" will eventually mean:
What ties these together is the impulse to pass legislation at all costs. Since the media have thoroughly shown that they don't care about policy, preferring instead a simplistic analysis that easily condenses into an "X won the day narrative," members of Congress have an incentive to get a bill, any bill, passed in order to avoid being painted as the day's loser. Then they can campaign on the number of bills they managed to shepherd through the process, knowing that their constituents are already primed to accept a raw number like that as a sign of significant accomplishment.
So when Democrats come up with some really good legislation, Republicans know that all they have to do is demand the inclusion of some incredibly dumb idea - or the removal of the key element - and then sit back to let the perverse incentives of the system work for them.
This favors Republicans because they don't want the federal government to ever accomplish anything good; whether it's by passing bad legislation or blocking good, they accomplish their goals. And since the media is only capable of comprehending a win-loss record of legislation passed vs. killed - and only barely at that - GOP politicians are able to comfortably advance their agenda on whatever media space they inhabit.
What's worse, GOP members of Congress are acting according to their supporters' wishes, because they also want to see the federal government fail at all costs, while progressives are constantly trying to push their ostensible representatives along on every issue. That's why it's so damn hard, and so damn frustrating all the damn time.