Democratic dysfunctionality on parade

"We are winning," declared former president Bill Clinton to a gathering of Democratic senators yesterday on the issue of health care, in the clearest sign yet that they're losing.

When your team must be told that it's winning, when the easy grace of impending victory gives way to the stilted panic of propaganda, then you know you're in trouble -- big trouble.

To make matters worse -- or, I should say, to reveal what's worse -- Clinton wasn't there merely to wheedle one ragtag band of holdouts to come around to the Democratic caucus' majority point of view; he was there to persuade all the assorted, battling factions, each as dyspeptic as the other: progressives disenchanted by the premature death of an authentic public option, centrists and conservatives posturing over uncurvaceous costs and anything else they can gloomily conjure, both pro- and anti-choice circles at each others' throats again ... And that's the short list.

"Just pass the bill, even if it's not exactly what you want," exhorted Clinton, with more than a touch of understatement. "It’s not important to be perfect here." He then got to the matter nearest and dearest to every Congressional pol's heart, which is scarcely the matter of your health care: "I think it is good politics to pass this and to pass this as soon as [you] can."

In brief, get this bloody thing done -- you people are stumbling and stalling so amateurishly, you're becoming an embarrassment to deadlock and delay. For heaven's sake, just pass the core of this thing, the nut of it -- some semblance of subsidized universality and an end to restrictive insurance provisions -- and then in classic Congressional tradition leave the problematic, clean-up details to someone else.

Why is that good politics for them and essential politics for President Obama, who dispatched Clinton (see panic: above) to Capitol Hill? Because, as Sen. Ron Wyden framed it after the meeting, "I think there is a general sense the clock is ticking.... [G]etting it done this year will in effect clear the tables and allow the focus to be on jobs and education and infrastructure."

Remember those things? Remember when politics was about more than opting in, which is triggering droves of voters to psychically opt out? (Electoral indifference is growing. According to the latest Gallup, only 26 percent believe that whatever Congress is doing might make their own health care "better," while a towering 67 percent say it'll be "worse" or "not much different.")

The Battling Bickersons of Capitol Hill have blown a historic opportunity to re-enthuse the electorate about fundamental change -- and an embattled White House knows it made mistakes, although it's difficult to determine just what they were and when they were made; simple senatorial arithmetic is a stubborn thing -- and now it's crunch time.

Mere voter indifference to, or minor worry about, changes in health care has metamorphosed into extraordinary dread about the descending economy and ascending joblessness. And that was Clinton's ultimate point: Wake up, you clowns, and clear your agenda to do something about jobs, before you find yourself measuring the drapes for your new minority-party Congressional offices.

But, so much for the pep talk. Unshakable reality looms. As the Politico reported Sunday, "Democrats [are] worried that [Majority Leader Harry Reid] has no final bill, no Democratic consensus on the way ahead and no guarantee he’ll finish by year’s end.... Senate action on health care has stopped dead" as Reid awaits the Congressional Budget Office's benediction, which undoubtedly, will result instead in a curse.

This year's window of opportunity is slamming (or has slammed) shut. There's still Senate debate to follow, amendments proposed, filibusters threatened or realized, a D.O.A House bill, a contentious conference committee, more CBO calculations, a final bill for both chamber's gauntlet and more debate, on and on.

About a year ago I put the odds of success of health-care reform in 2009 at 95 to 5; a month or two ago I pegged them around 50-50; now, I'd say, at best they're 5 to 95. As for next year? An election year? Shall I repeat that last question?

The only amusing dimension to all this -- that is, health-care reform's quite possibly imminent demise in 2009 -- will come in watching, in 2010, each Democratic faction fancifully sell defeat as victory. Congressional progressives will claim they protected their base -- the public option was insufferably nixed; centrists will claim they protected their base -- there was no real cost containment; and conservatives will claim they protected their base -- those gosh-darn government bureaucrats won't be denying your MRI anytime soon.

The less amusing dimension: all the above will in reality be but more Democratic dysfunctionality on parade.