Steve Coll thinks Olympia Snowe's position may actually change some Democrats' relationships to health care reform -- and to each other.
Snowe has a more expansionist view of what health-care reform should accomplish than some of the Midwestern and Southern Democrats. The hope may actually be that she will pull some of the politically vulnerable Democrats a bit to left and produce a better bill in the final negotiating scrum. The Baucus bill is flawed, but it is a decent foundation for the final round of negotiation, especially where we were after August’s town-hall demagoguery. With Snowe’s vote yesterday, I think we know one thing about the final legislation: it will be somewhat better than the Baucus legislation. It might be much better, but I doubt that. And it will, nonetheless, constitute the most significant change in the American social contract since the Great Society.
