Process, Convoluted; Explanation, Not So

"When you have two competing theories that make exactly the same predictions, the simpler one is the better."

There are several different descriptions of Occam’s Razor and human behavior being often of complex cause, the theory is not always applicable.

Still, sometimes it is. Consider, for example, explanations offered for the support given the Stupak-Pitts anti-abortion amendment, which gained the assent of many pro-choice members of the House of Representatives, on its way to passage by a vote of 240-194. As you may have heard, passage of the health care bill, with this radical language attached, soon took place in the lower chamber.

Nate Silver of the respected fivethirtyeight.com found there were 35 House members who had in 2007-2008 at least a 67 rating with Planned Parenthood and no more than a 33 rating with the National Right to Life Committee (chart included in that post) who voted for the amendment. These included 20 Democrats, of whom 17 voted for final passage. He argues (11/9/08)

…. there are idiosyncratic explanations in a number of cases, but I take this as a sign that they're worried about the re-election environment they'll face in 2010. 11 of the 20 pro-choice Democrats who voted for Stupak reside in districts that are rated as vulnerable according to Cook Political (note: candidates who are leaving the House to run for Senate or governor are rated based on those races instead). And, interestingly, they seem to think that a pro-choice vote would render them more vulnerable than a pro-health care vote, even though the pro-choice position is generally more popular than the health care bill on the table at the moment (although some recent polls have shown the pro-choice position losing ground).

Certainly, on health care, some of this may be a consequence of the logic that James Carville and others have espoused: Democrats know -- or believe -- that they'll be damned if don't pass a health care bill, so why not take the chance that things will turn out OK if they do? But there may also be something more here. Whereas the pro-life (anti-choice) movement is very well organized and has a long history of delivering votes, the anti-health care movement is somewhat disjointed, seemed to be limited in its electoral reach in NY-23, and carries a lot of baggage -- Glenn Beck, Michelle Bachmann, town hall screamers, and the like. And it may also be revealing of how they perceive their own base: whereas health care is a sine qua non for most Democratic base voters, they seem to be betting that the pro-choice position might no longer be.

Well, now, that’s a rational and reasonable theory. But a little complicated, and less likely, than that offered by Diane DeGette (D.-Co.), who led opposition to this change, which widened the scope of the Hyde Amendment. DeGette attributes much of the support for this restriction of abortion rights to the failure of many liberal/progressive members to recognize the scope of the proposal, as indicated in this exchange with Open Left’s Paul Rosenberg:

Open Left: So do you believe that that confusion is what accounts for the margin that he was able to win on?

Congresswoman DeGette: Absolutely. Absolutely. No question about it, Because I had quite a few people say to me 'This is just Hyde.' And I was running around... Most people found out about this on Saturday morning, when they got there, because the decision was made late Friday night, and I was literally running around, trying to tell people what it did.

At the same time, a lot of people were being pressured by their bishops, which, you know, that's a whole different thing. So they thought, 'Well if this is just Hyde, then no big deal.' But I had several people after that vote say to me... people who voted for Stupak, they said, 'This needs to be fixed by the conference.'
And we have several people who have 100% pro-choice voting records who voted for it.

It’s hard to imagine members of the United States House of Representatives being so ignorant. (Really, it is.) But it may not be mere ignorance, but clever strategy inasmuch as

.... Bart really moved the goal post, because in the Energy and Commerce Committee in the summer he offered several of his amendments and we defeated all of them. So after that he said that he demendad that the Speaker allow him to offer his amendment on the floor, although he wasn't clear which one. When the bill came up and he said that if he was not allowed to offer his amendment, then he would have 40 votes against the rule. So we went out and very industriously got enough votes to pass the rule. And so the Speaker said, 'You know we've got the votes to pass the rule. So I'm not going to support your amendment being in order.'

Then he said, this was like last Thursday or Friday, at the 11th hour, she said 'We've got the votes the votes for the rule, and it's not going to be in order,' and he said, 'Well, fine, if you don't include my amendment in the rule to bring the bill to the floor, then we're all going to vote against the bill. So he shifted the goal post. And what happened was-and the way it would have worked is that his language would have been a part of the rule to bring the bill to the floor, so all of us would have had to vote for it. We would have all had to vote for the biggest expansion of retrictions on a woman's right to choose in our lifetime.

Rather complicated, but it seems at the last minute Representative Stupak threatened Speaker Pelosi with the withholding of 40 votes to release the bill to the floor unless his amendment were included in the rule to allow a vote. Consequently, the Speaker agreed to a separate vote on his amendment, which then passed- apparently with the assent of several pro-choice members unaware of the implications of the legislation. As the video (below) of Stupak's testimony before the House Rules Committee earlier in the month indicates, the Michigan congressman sold the measure as merely nothing more restrictive than the Hyde Amendment, noting "funding in HR 3962 is not subject to the annual appropriations law and therefore is not subject to the Hyde provisions contained in the annual labor HHS bill." Disingenuously assuring colleagues "we are not writing a new federal abortion policy," he strongly implied that the provision merely codified the provisions of Hyde.

Fortunately, the effort to impose on abortion rights sweeping new restrictions neither in the letter nor the spirit of the Hyde Amendment may not be included in the health care reform bill considered in the Senate. And if it is, it may not survive the conference committee report. Nonetheless, dramatic passage of the measure in a House of Representatives with a majority of Democrats, supportive of a Democratic president, is an impressive example of clever strategy supplemented by the ignorance of others.

Crossing The Line

Sam Stein writes that The Huffington Post has obtained several internal e-mail messages from the McCain presidential campaign which cast serious doubt on the "accuracy" of Sarah Palin's "Going Rogue." Among the instances he describes is this:

In one email thread, dated October 14, 2008, Palin says she is "not thrilled" with the idea of going on Saturday Night Live as a way of marginalizing the show's unflattering impersonations of her.

"Not after seeing clips of what they've been playing re: my family," Palin writes to campaign manager Steve Schmidt, as well as top strategists Rick Davis; and Nicolle Wallace. "I had no idea how gross 'celebrities' on that show and in other celebrity venues could get when it comes to family and other aspects of my life that have nothing to do with seeking the vp slot. These folks are whack - didn't know it was as bad as it is... what's the upside in giving them any celebrity venue a ratings boost? That's Todd's input also," she concludes, in reference to her husband.

Schmidt would respond minutes later, telling Palin that, "if you don't want to do it you should not," while adding that a guest appearance would "get an enormous amount of" attention and help her "to fly above all this."

"The american people will see someone who can laugh at themselves which has alwauys [sic] been a trait they admire," he adds.

Palin would ultimately make a guest appearance on Saturday Night Live days later. But in her upcoming book she describes the deliberations about whether or not to go on the show much differently than the emails suggest. In "Going Rogue", the vice presidential candidate writes that "from the beginning, I liked the idea that John and I might appear on the show."

But it's not only The Quitting Governor. Washington Post syndicated cloumnist Ruth Marcus was shocked, shocked! at the “misrepresentations and distortions” articulated by several members of the Repub caucus during the recent floor debate on the health care bill. Marcus notes ("Health Scare Tactics," November 11) these departures from objective reality:

- "Let's remember the Pelosi plan for jobs: an $800 billion stimulus plan that caused unemployment to go from 8.5 percent to over 10 percent." (Jack Kingston, Georgia)

-“If you're a Medicare Advantage enrollee . . . the Congressional Budget Office says that 80 percent of them are going to lose their Medicare Advantage.” (John Boehner, Minority Leader, Ohio).

-"The bill raises taxes for just about everyone." (Brett Guthrie, Kentucky).

-"This bill, on Page 733, empowers the Washington bureaucracy to deny lifesaving patient care if it costs too much." (Tom Price, Georgia)

-"This bill, on Page 94, will make it illegal for any American to obtain health care not approved by Washington." (Tom Price, Georgia)

-"Americans could face five years in jail if they don't comply with the bill's demands to buy approved health insurance." (Dave Camp, Michigan)

- "I offered two amendments to try to improve this bill -- one to require members of Congress to enroll in the public option like we're going to require all of you to do." (Buck Mckeon, California)

-"The president's own economic advisers have said that this bill will kill 5.5 million jobs." (Ginny Brown-Waite, Florida)

Of course, notwithstanding Marcus' generosity, six of these eight claims are not mere "misrepresentations or distortions" but lies. Presumably, Camp if someone is not to have bought insurance, and is prosecuted, and is fined, and refuses to pay the fine, and then threatens the life of a court employee, he/she would be incarcerated. And given that someone now without health insurance would have a choice of plans, what does "approved" mean?

McKeon may have introduced a bill which would require members of Congress to enroll in the public option and may actually, in some flight into fantasy, believe that such an amendment would improve the bill. Still, no one as the bill is written, as any bill is written, as any bill would be written in this session of Congress, requires anyone to enroll in a public plan.

And these are the ones which are not demonstrably, inarguably, fabrications. (Marcus may believe Kingston's statement is merely among "extraneous claims about alleged Democratic excesses," but anyone who believes an $800 billion stimulus plan actually would decrease employment by more than 1.5% is, well.... no one would.)

Other than right-wing ideology, these House Republicans may not have much in common with the former Alaska governor. But it's telling that, in the case of the major policy initiative of the Obama administration and of one of the two leading candidates for the Republican nomination for President in 2012, exaggeration, distortion, manipulation, and deception apparently have given way to lying.

Of The Wall

In an article posted November 6 on foreignpolicy.com, contributing editor Christian Caryl blasts five myths about the fall of the Berlin Wall. It did not come down, Caryl argues, because of the C.I.A. or the K.G.B. It was not all about economics, nor was it inevitable. And there is one more myth, an article of faith within the Repub Party, and rarely questioned in the mainstream media. To get the explanation, we go to our favorite dissembler, Rush Limbaugh, who on Monday claimed

Today does mark the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall starting to come down. It was midnight 20 years ago that East Germans were allowed to travel past the wall from East Berlin and West Berlin, and exercise their freedoms. When Ronald Reagan demanded of Gorbachev in 1987, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall," it came true, two years later on this date. President Reagan is all but forgotten, it seems, in media coverage of this event.

Mr. Caryl, however, explains

On June 12, 1987, in front of the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin, Reagan issued a challenge to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to make good on his promises of liberalization. "Come here, to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" Reagan's supporters claim that this speech played a key role in sparking the events of 1989, but there's little evidence to back this up.

In fact, Reagan's words left little obvious imprint on the thinking of dissidents behind the Iron Curtain. The opposition movements in East Germany and Czechoslovakia were more peacenik than Grand Old Party; in Poland, Solidarity activists already had their own pope as a moral beacon. Neither the Washington Post nor the New York Times even ran Reagan's speech on the front page. Some Reaganites tended to regard the speech as a grand bit of political theater, intended mainly for consumption back home, with limited real-world repercussions. Reagan's own national security advisor, Frank Carlucci, later recalled thinking, "It's a great speech line. But it will never happen."

And in West Berlin itself -- where the late-1980s population included a disproportionate number of Greens and counterculture refugees from West Germany's draft -- the applauders were outnumbered by the rioters, who chose to protest against Reagan's conservative policies rather than applaud his chutzpah. If anything, it was Reagan's willingness, throughout most of his second term, to meet Gorbachev halfway that helped the Soviet leader back away from the use of force -- an achievement that led British journalist Victor Sebestyen to dub Reagan "America's Leading Dove."

If Ronald Reagan “is all but forgotten…. In media coverage of this event,” think of how Harry S. Truman, Dwight David Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard M. Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and George H.W. Bush must feel (or would, in the case of the deceased) upon being neglected. Every American president contributed to the ultimate disintegration of the Iron Curtain, aided by the oft-derided MAD (mutually assured destruction) policy and, as appropriate, conciliatory outreach. And that’s without consideration of Solidarity’s Lech Walesa, Pope John Paul II, and the major contributor, Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

So it’s not a media conspiracy against the Republican Party, though Limbaugh, ever claiming the GOP as victim, would like to mislead his audience into thinking otherwise. Nor should correction of this myth be of interest merely to historians and academicians. Young adults of today were much younger, or not even alive, during the Reagan Administration and are a ripe target for the disinformation spread by Rush Limbaugh and his fellow propagandists.

The Candidate As President (Or The President As Candidate)

A segment of the left feels jilted by President Barack Obama.

Mr. Obama, who once declared himself a “fierce advocate for gay and lesbian Americans" and added “It’s something I’ve been consistent on,” has been treating the gay community like, oh, perhaps, abortion-rights supporters or advocates of genuine health care reform.

Spearheading a boycott, AMERICAblog explains

There has been little, if any, pressure from the White House for votes on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA). The administration continues to send mixed signals on the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell (DADT). And we've been told not to expect the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) to even be considered until President Obama's second term. In the last two weeks alone, we were angered that the Obama administration continued to defend DOMA in the courts -- last June, the administration's lawyers even compared loving gay relationships to incest and pedophilia -- and we were saddened that the White House and the Democratic party refused to help us defeat anti-gay ballot initiatives in Maine and Washington state. LGBT Americans, our families, and our friends kept our promise at the ballot box, we now expect President Obama to keep his in the White House.

Until the Democratic Congress passes, and President Obama signs, legislation enacting ENDA, repealing DADT, and repealing DOMA, we ask you to join us in pledging to postpone contributions to the Democratic National Committee, Organizing for America, and the Obama campaign. This temporary (we hope) boycott is sponsored by AMERICAblog, and cosponsored by Daily Kos, Michelangelo Signorile, and Paul Sousa, among others.

Given that the most important (other than the the economy, generally the most pressing issue in the country) and contentious issue in the U.S.A. currently is health care- and the Democratic establishment has been pandering alternatively to Olympia Snowe and to conservative Democrats- a boycott over gay rights issues seems inappropriately timed. Or, rather, is obviously inappropriately timed.

Still, there is one Democrat who- somewhere- must be sympathizing with progressives who find that the promise of Barack Obama is, well, promise.

If you think like me, you probably thought that the following controversy was particularly trivial and irrelevant, cheapening the political discourse while we were considering election of the leader of The Free World. And that it must have come from Karl Rove or some other Repub hit machine. Not so. As Alex Koppelman writes in Salon

It's easy to get caught up in the distractions and the silliness and the tit-for-tat that consumes our politics; the bickering that none of us are immune to, and that trivializes the profound issues -- two wars, an economy in recession, a planet in peril," then-Sen. Barack Obama said last April, on the night he lost Pennsylvania's Democratic presidential primary to Hillary Clinton.

That sort of thing has been a consistent theme from Obama, both on the trail and while he's been in the White House, the message being that people should stop focusing on the small, silly things that characterize so much of politics, preventing actual substance from being part of the discussion.

In some ways, Obama and his team have tried to live up to that. In others, well, they're just as guilty as everyone else.

One of the sillier, more trivial stories from the presidential campaign, and perhaps the one that got people on the left most consistently riled, was what started out as a pretty short blog post by Politico's Ben Smith, who reported that John Edwards had been getting $400 haircuts. Though other scandals have since overshadowed memories of Edwards' 2008 campaign, it was a big deal at the time, and it stuck around for quite a while.

Well, now we know who was responsible for the distraction and the silliness that emanated from that story: Obama's campaign. Campaign Manager David Plouffe revealed the truth in his new book, writing, "We did much less of this [opposition research] than other campaigns did, but there were times we indulged -- it was our researchers who found John Edwards's infamous $400 hair cut expenditures.

The Willie Horton story- admittedly much more incendiary, cutting to the core of American attitudes toward race and crime- during the 1988 presidential election campaign at least came from the GOP side, notwithstanding Repub claims otherwise. The haircut matter, however, was a cowardly attack by one Democrat (uh, his operative) upon another.

Perhaps if President Obama and his current hit man, Rahm Emanuel, undermine the opponents of health care reform- Republicans and conservative Democrats- as he did an ideological ally within his own party 2-3 years ago, meaningful health care reform will be passed in this congressional session. If only.

Dobbs, CNN Part

(Cliché alert.)

Some in the left blogosphere are having a field day with the resignation (video below) of Lou Dobbs from CNN.

Under the headline “CNN”s on-air racist, Lou Dobbs, is gone after tonight’s show,” says “the hater is quitting.” “Thers” on Firedoglake sarcastically rants “Given the Harsh Discrimination the Liberal Media inflicts upon angry old paranoid white guys who yell a lot and get stuff wrong, it’s amazing that Dobbs even had a teevee show in the first place.” (I couldn't help but respond.)

Arguably most significant, however, was the glee expressed by Media Matters. President Eric Burns issued this statement:

For too long, CNN provided Lou Dobbs with its stamp of approval as he pursued a dangerous, one-sided and all too often false conspiracy tinged crusade against immigrants. This is a happy day for all those who care about this nation of immigrants and believe in the power of media to elevate the political discourse.

Media Matters, a very credible blog generally strong on research, trivializes the wide-ranging commentary,some of it conservative and some not, by implying that it all amounted to a “false conspiracy tinged crusade against immigrants.” There once was a time that liberal organizations cared about unfair trade practices destroying American jobs- another of Dobbs obsessions- but, alas, that interest now seems a thing of the past.

More significant, however, is MM’s assertion of "a happy day for all those who…. Believe in the power of media to elevate the political discourse.” Presumably, this means “the power of the media to elevate the political discourse” harmed by Lou Dobbs, suggesting, not unreasonably, that media liberals/progressives/leftitsts played a primary role in unseating the anchorman. Writing today in The Washington Post, media critic Howard Kurtz noted

Liberal groups such as NDN and Media Matters had mounted a "Dump Dobbs" campaign, and Latino organizations challenged such Dobbs declarations as his 2006 statement that about one-third of the U.S. prison population "is estimated to be illegal aliens"--which the anchor later acknowledged was way too high. ( Included was) The Southern Poverty Law Center (which) asked CNN in July to fire Dobbs over what it called his "racist conspiracy theories."

And Media Matters referred to its

leading role in the Drop Dobbs Coalition (DropDobbs.com) which was launched to call attention to Dobbs' incendiary hate speech and falsehoods, which advertisers were supporting through their sponsorship of his nightly CNN program. The Coalition includes numerous national civil rights and other groups concerned about the kind of hate promoted daily by Dobbs on his television and radio programs. In addition to Media Matters in partnership with NDN, the coalition, representing over two million people, includes the National Council of La Raza, LULAC, National Hispanic Media Coalition, America's Voice, The Hispanic Institute, Southern Poverty Law Center, Netroots Nation, Voto Latino, LCLAA, Center for New Community, Reform Immigration for America, the Dolores Huerta Foundation, the National Puerto Rican Coalition and GALEO.

We’ve been down this road before. Such as in September, when the Los Angeles explained

Responding to a firestorm that raged on conservative talk shows and websites, the White House on Sunday announced the resignation of a top environmental advisor who had made fiery remarks about Republicans and signed a petition questioning whether the U.S. government had any role in planning the Sept. 11 attacks.

Van Jones, a prominent Oakland community activist, issued a statement decrying "lies and distortions" and a "smear campaign" that had been waged against him by the right.

Recently, we have this, again reported by the LA Times (which claims that the subject had joined the administration on the condition that she would stay only a few months):

In an expected development, White House Communications Director Anita Dunn is stepping down after a brief tenure marked by a dust-up with Fox News Channel over its coverage....

Last month, she told CNN that Fox was "part of the Republican Party." She said that the network's practice was to take the party's "talking points and put them on the air. Take their opposition research and put them on the air -- and that's fine. But let's not pretend they're a news network the way CNN is."

That touched off a small-screen feud. A Fox talk show host, Glenn Beck, aired footage of Dunn addressing a high school graduation ceremony in June and describing Mao Tse-tung and Mother Teresa as two of her "favorite political philosophers."

Beck said on his show: "The guy responsible for more deaths than any other 20th century leader is her favorite philosopher!"

Not to be outdone by Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity, and the others on the right intolerant of anyone they disagree with, some liberal organizations appear, at least, to have effected the release from his contract of the man they loved to hate, Lou Dobbs. Not Limbaugh, Hannity, or Beck, for whom accuracy, detail, and dialogue are as unwanted as swine flu, and whose primary goal (in the case of the first two) is to return the Republican Party to power. No, the scalp was to be that of Lou Dobbs, who wants no part of the Republican Party and whom conservatives view with wariness. Congratulations.

Abortion- Or Gender- Politics

The House has approved its, albeit deeply flawed, version of health care legislation. Some blogs have been effectively pointing out (most recently inclusion of the Stupak anti-choice amendment) the various problems with the bill as passed in the lower chamber. There is, of course, Digby, as well as Susie Madrak of Crooks and Liars. And most prolific has been Firedoglake, where Jon Walker has repeatedly examined the amendment which apparently brought enough conservative Democrats to the (small “p”) party to ensure passage. And the site’s proprietor, Jane Hamsher, posted provocatively on this topic yesterday afternoon.

Hamsher notes- as she had previously- the failure of NARAL and Planned Parenthood to act aggressively to defend a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy in light of their desire to participate in President Emanuel’s inner circle and notes, somewhat sarcastically (emphasis hers)

Wait…Planned Parenthood and NARAL are scoring the bill, right?

Laurie Rubiner, Planned Parenthood’s vice president of public policy, declined to say whether her organization would consider a vote in favor of the bill as a vote against abortion rights on its congressional scorecard.

Evidently “the organization must tread carefully to promote reproductive rights without sabotaging a health care bill they would otherwise find generally beneficial.”

They may be able to sell that in the weekly Common Purpose veal-pen roundup, but I’m not sure it’s going to go over so well with women who just lost control of their uteruses to Bart Stupak.

“David NYC” makes a (or two) particularly interesting, and cogent, point on, ironically, the blog (Daily Kos) run by the reflexively pro-Obama Markos Moulitsas, when he notes of NARAL and another pro-choice organization:

Instead, we've seen NARAL waste money on hopeless Republicans like Dede Scozzafava just to preserve their "bipartisan" cred. They also infamously endorsed Joe "Short Ride" Lieberman over Ned Lamont. Meanwhile, EMILY's List supported a primary challenger last year named Nikki Tinker against a Congressman with a spotless pro-choice record, Rep. Steve Cohen. To give you a sense of how effective that challenge was, Tinker ran ads which were so offensive that EMILY wound up condemning its own candidate. Combined, Scozzafava and Tinker wound up with 24% of the vote. Simply put, the priorities of pro-choice organizations like this need to change.

What could Dede Scozzafava, running in upstate New York a campaign nearly hopeless from the start and Nikki Tinker (whose ad was properly condemned by Keith Olbermann and Barack Obama), campaigning down in Tennessee, possibly have in common?

Don’t think too hard- the answer is the first you came up with.

It’s a disease, figuratively speaking, afflicting some-some- elements of the progressive left (and not only women), as it has in the past afflicted the right.

While if insight and readability are the two most important criteria in the quality of the blog, there is none better than Digby, she demonstrated this tendency recently when unfortunately remarking:

I would have to guess that if more than 17% of the congress were women, there would be a little bit less likelihood that women's rights would be so often used as a handy tool to placate neanderthals. That's just a guess. Habits are hard to break.

Unless, of course, those additional women were Republicans, 17 of 17 of whom voted for the Stupak amendment in the House (which, admittedly, Digby pointed out). Sure, only two of the 56 Democratic women in the House voted for the measure; but fewer than one-third of the men did so. The problem, Digby, is not primarily one of gender.

And then you have MSNBC’s Nancy Snyderman, after making a few good points and before making another, inexpicably claiming

A white man deciding a woman's…… a woman's responsibility in her own procreation. I mean I ... I find it infuriating. I mean, I really think it doesn't matter what side of the abortion issue or pro-choice issue you're on, the fact that they are now making health care harder and harder for women to navigate the system. I think it's outrageous—just outrageous.

A white man? How did that get in there? The problem, Dr. Snyderman, is not primarily gender, nor race at all.

There still are elements of gender (see Limbaugh, Rush) and racial (see Limbaugh, Rush) bigotry on the Repub right. But that is not cause to over-emphasize the issue of gender, or to invoke the issue of race, in abortion politics. That is one, among many, traits of the Republican Party not to emulate.

Pelosi and Obama, Triumphant

Before Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck have a chance to proclaim Saturday night's passage in the House of Representatives of a health care bill, sponsored by Democrat John Dingell of Michigan, a loss for President Obama (and perhaps his party), let us ponder the enormity of this political triumph.

It was a major political victory for the President and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Passage in the Senate of its own bill, though likely, is not certain; and the nearly almost progressive bill passed in the House thereafter probably will be eviscerated in conference. But if the forces of reform in the country (U.S. Representatives, the public, special interest groups) were on balance strongly arrayed in favor of improving health care, the victory would be unimpressive.

However, given opposition of the insurance industry and dependence of members of Congress upon its largesse, the narrowness of the favorable vote accrues even more to the credit of Mr. Obama and Mrs. Pelosi. The effective vote was nearly as close as possible. The bill officially passed 220 to 215. However, the lone Republican- Joseph Cao of New Orleans, Lousiana- approved the bill only when the vote was 218 to 213, passage was assured, and many House Democrats had erupted in applause. As Cao voted "aye" only after it was a "done deal," it appears he voted in the affirmative only because passage would have ensued even without his vote. Nevertheless, the Congressman's assent was a feather in the cap for both President Obama and chief-of-staff Emmanuel, both of whom had aggressively lobbied Cao for his support. And they got it, enabling them in the weeks ahead to claim reform a "bipartisan effort."

And it was a victory for the Speaker of the House for two reasons. Limbaugh and Politico may have scoffed at the victory Pelosi claimed at the election on Tuesday of pro-reform Democrats in House races in California and New York State, but these two individuals played an important part in passage. Garamendi in California replaced a liberal Democrat, Owens in California a Republican. Replace both with a Republican, the vote is 217-217, with the likelihood Cao would have cast the deciding vote against the legislation.

Additionally, Pelosi (and President Emanuel) won passage only by selling out abortion rights with the introduction, and passage, of the anti-choice amendment of Bart Stupak (D.-MI) earlier in the day. If the amendment (which went beyond the existing restrictions of the Hyde Amendment) had passed and then the bill itself had passed easily, Pelosi would have sacrificed her principles for.... nothing. Clearly, though, the bill would not have passed were it not for approval of Stupak's amendment.

Passage of health care reform came at a big price for the progressive Speaker, but she'll take the "W." It came at little cost for President Obama, who appears to be increasingly unconcerned with the actual content of whatever legislation is ultimately enacted. Saturday wasn't the Super Bowl (or the World Series, or the BCS national championship game) but it was the playoffs, and they weren't eliminated.