Healthcare and the Iraq War vote

[BzaDem]

A few people have compared the upcoming Healthcare votes in both houses with the Iraq War vote (and say that voting "Yes" on the current healthcare bill is somewhat similar to voting "Yes" on the Iraq War vote, at least in terms of political consequences).

Let's look at that.

Voting no on the Iraq War was actually the mainstream Democratic viewpoint in Congress (or at least close to it). In the House, over 60% of the Democratic caucus voted no. In the Senate, only 42% voted no, but it was still well within the Democratic mainstream to vote no.

On the healthcare vote, EVERY SINGLE Democrat in the Senate is going to vote yes (if not for final passage, then for cloture). That means that every single progressive Senator examined the following two questions:

a) Is the current bill better than the status quo?
b) If this bill fails, is it possible that we can get a better bill in reconciliation (now or in the reasonable future)?

and answered Yes to the first and No to the second. After all, if any progressive Senator (such as Bernie Sanders, who as many here know was considered to the left of Howard Dean in Vermont) thought the answer to a) was no or b) was yes, they would vote no on cloture. The fact that none of them are going to do that shows how they view the answers to question a) and b).

In the House, the situation will be similar. There might be a few "no" votes, but other than Dennis Kucinich, the only progressives voting no will be those that received permission from the leadership to do so because their vote wasn't decisive. Some may disagree with my House prediction, but I am pretty confident that the actual vote total (which will come soon) will prove this prediction to be correct.

This means that to compare an IWR yes vote to an HCR yes vote is to compare a vote for a position right in the middle of the Democratic party (at the time) to a vote for a position that not ONE progressive Senator would take and that at most up to 5% of the progressives in the House would take. Those that attempt to make this comparison aren't really doing themselves any favors.