by Nicholas Beaudrot of Electoral Math
I tend to side with Matt on the viability of a federal health care bill making it through Congress after the next elections. Of the major non-Iraq policy priorites—health care, restructuring the tax code, labor law reform, and action to slow global warming—I suspect global warming has the strongest consensus in Congress, in the business lobby, and in public opinion. What's more, the public face of the opposition is less sympathetic; people tend to trust their doctors, and when TV ads show old men in white lab coats saying that the health care bill is bad, it may have lots of resonance. Oil companies, however, are some of the most negatively viewed businesses in America. This suggests that Congressional Democrats will have an easier time pushing some sort of CO2 reduction policy than expanding health care. Even if Congress does pass something, GOP backbenchers like James Inhofe (R-OK), "Smokey" Joe Barton (R-TX) et al. are likely to provide plenty of campaign fodder to show that Republicans are out of touch with scientific reality.
Without a filibuster proof majority in the Senate, Democrats will have to make Republicans fear electoral defeat, in the same way that moderate Democrats feel the need to vote for budget-busting tax shifts. That will probably require at least one more round of Congressional losses before the remaining moderates decide that they must buck their leadership in order to have a shot at re-election.
