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Sen. Blanche Lincoln voted in favor of the Senate moving forward to debate health care reform. That’s great. But focus must be placed on exactly what Sen. Lincoln explicitly said she will not do if she doesn’t get her way.
She heard Jane’s dare and, rather than blink, she raised it with a dare of her own.
Just before she voted today in favor of moving debate forward, she told us that we’re going to lose.
And she dared us to do something about it, if we can.
This afternoon, Sen. Lincoln explained her vote allowing the Senate to begin debate (transcript here):
The vote tonight will mark the beginning of consideration of this bill by the full U.S. Senate, not the end.
And she went on to say:
In fact, this is a vote for or against a procedure that allows us to begin open debate on health care reform. It is nothing more or less.
So, she’s saying she’ll deign to allow her colleagues to debate health care reform.
But she didn’t stop there.
Before she finished speaking, she said that she ultimately will not allow her colleagues in the Senate to vote on any bill unless they decide what she wants them to decide.
She said it loudly and clearly:
I have already alerted the Leader, and I am promising my colleagues that I am prepared to vote against moving to the next stage of consideration as long as a government-run public option is included.
And what’s her response to Jane’s dare?
She spoke loudly and clearly on that score, too:
Today, I know that I will ultimately be held accountable by my constituents in Arkansas for my votes on health care, not the National Republican Senatorial Committee nor by any other groups from outside my state.
I agree with Sen. Lincoln that she will be held accountable by her constituents in Arkansas, but she should know that, if she votes against Arkansans having the opportunity to choose a public health insurance option, we will work with them to help remove her.
If Sen. Lincoln wants to deny Arkansans the opportunity to choose a public health insurance option, then we should help give them an opportunity to choose someone else to be their Senator, someone who will do a better job of representing their interests in the U. S. Senate.
I am making another contribution to FDL Action PAC’s Fund Organizers in Arkansas: Dare Blanche Lincoln to Filibuster the Public Option.
I hope others will join me so that Sen. Lincoln will see that we’re serious when we say that her political career is at stake if she chooses to take sides against Arkansans and all Americans.
Either Sen. Lincoln gets out of the way, or she must face a primary challenger.
4 Comments
Evidently she was for it before she was against it.
http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2009/11/21/lincoln-site-public/
Best outcome:
1. Lincoln filibusters the bill and it dies. It’s a bad bill.
2. Lincoln gets primaried and loses.
It’s a two-fer!
First, I agree that this bill is far from perfect, but Jane’s right that a public option in the bill makes it a better bill than one without a public option. If Lincoln does anything to kill the public option (getting a triggered public option or just plain blocks cloture so there can be an up-or-down vote), then we lose and she wins.
Second, we can start to point out now that she’s already given us enough reason to help a primary challenger to defeat her. Whether or not she ultimately decides not to betray the Democratic Caucus, Democrats everywhere, and Arkansans, we can still very much continue to argue that she has to go.
But start getting the momentum going now. Start building the pressure now. Start planning now for either contingency, one for the case in which she’s proven herself to be ineffective despite having ultimately been forced to allow a vote for a public option (she’d still vote against HCR w/ a public option, btw), and another for the case in which she actually sides with the Republicans to filibuster the public option.
Either way, she’s out.
Right, either way she’s out.
But Jane is not right in working for this bill to pass in its present form.
You have to look at this bill in terms of its likely consequences including the political activity that is likely to be the response to its passage. If the bill passes with a PO in it, it will take the pressure off the Dems to keep working on hcr before the election of 2010. That’s a very bad outcome, because with or without the meagre constrained PO, the bill is a giveaway to the insurance companies that still implements Grayson’s Republican solution: “Don’t get sick, but if you do, then die quickly.”
Btw, I’ve posted a new diary that argues that the logic of the PO strategy is to blame for the travesty we face now. You may be interested in taking a look, Knox