Real and Fake Sticking Points

I think Mickey Kaus makes an excellent point here about alleged “sticking points” in health care. The crux of the matter is that in any negotiation you need to distinguish between a dispute that could wreck a deal between two parties who genuinely want a deal, and a dispute that provides a convenient pretext for parties who on some level don’t want a deal. So specifically on health care it seems extremely unlikely that if there are 218 House Democrats and 60 Senate Democrats who honest-to-God want a universal health care bill passed that disagreements about abortion could prevent that from happening.

But insofar as there are members who don’t want to take the political risk of voting “yes” on a comprehensive health care reform bill, but also don’t want to be seen as spiking the initiative, then developing a hard line position on abortion can be convenient. Like say Ben Nelson and Bob Casey say they can’t vote for health care unless it contains Stupak language, and then Joe Lieberman (Freedom of Choice Act cosponsor!) and Olympia Snowe say they can’t vote for health care unless it doesn’t contain Stupak language. Well, then health care dies. And yet nobody has to take the blame for having killed it if a constituent gets mad.