Has Obama's bipartisanship emphasis been helpful to progressive policy-making ?

[steve2470]

I think it's safe to say, with HCR it was not. Was it instrumental in bringing aboard Collins and Snowe on some bills, or would they have gone along with us anyway ?

[xchrom]

1. Nice phrasing of the conflict, I think.

And it is that - in part - that's made things so fractious.

The other I would say -- to go along with that --
Has been the 60 vote rule.
A kind of forced bipartisanship.

[zipplewrath]

2. They weren't the obstacles

They were presented as the targets, by the conservative democrats that leveraged the GOP opposition. But the truth is that Nelson and others (lieberman amongst them) were the primary targets that shifted this thing so far right. It isn't clear that Snowe particularly objected specifically to the public option. Her primary concern was the COST of the public option. It was Lieberman that was "no way no how".

The White House, specifically Rahm, discouraged the exposing of the role of individual democrat senator's roles in blocking and shifting HCR to the right. It is what the "fucking retarded" comment was all about. The result was a sort of "shut down" on exposing who was blocking what within the democratic congress and White House. Several progressive organizations wanted to expose them, but they couldn't really find out who was blocking what because no one was talking. There is some indication that the White House was as cooperative in it as the conservative democrats. It's hard to prove whether that was a "willing" cooperation or a strategic conclusion.