Steve Benen makes a wise observation about Howard Dean, and about why the White House PR team is being so much harder on Dean than on the Democratic senators who are standing against the health reform bill, like Ben Nelson?
The more aggressive Howard Dean became in fighting to kill the Senate health care bill, the more the White House communications operation pushed back. By yesterday afternoon, Robert Gibbs told reporters, "I don't think any rational person would say killing [the health care reform] bill makes a whole lot of sense at this point."
Now that Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) is threatening to kill the bill altogether, Jed Lewison asks if the conservative Nebraskan will "get the Howard Dean treatment."So here's a question: Will the White House come down as hard on Ben Nelson as they have on Howard Dean?I've seen this come up in a few places today, but I think it's extremely unlikely that the White House will be even mildly, indirectly critical of Nelson -- but it's not because the president's team is somehow playing favorites or coming down harder on liberals. ...
The difference is, the White House doesn't need Howard Dean's vote -- he doesn't have one in Congress. The administration does need Nelson, Burris, Sanders, and every other member of the Senate Democratic caucus to vote for cloture. ...Washington Monthly
Benen also points to Lee Fang's argument that Howard Dean is being inconsistent -- at best. For example:
The regulations in the current Senate reform bill are actually stronger than the SFC regulations Dean endorsed previously. The current reform bill has a medical loss ratio mandate of 85 percent -- and the SFC Dean praised had no requirement for how much of each premium dollar should go to health care, only reporting standards. In the current bill, parents can keep dependent children on their coverage longer, up to age 27. In the SFC bill, there was no such provision.
So far there are more than three dozen comments following Fang's article. The support for Dean seems pretty overwhelming and pretty disgusted with Senate Democrats.
Democrats in the Senate, however, have managed to do something right for a change even while Senate Republicans' obstructionist tactics have done the party considerable damage: they tried to filibuster a defense spending bill as a way of delaying any move on health care. Yes, really -- Republicans stood in the way of military spending.
Senate Republicans failed early Friday in their bid to filibuster a massive Pentagon bill that funds the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, an unusual move designed to delay President Obama's health-care legislation.
On a 63 to 33 vote, Democrats cleared a key hurdle that should allow them to approve the must-pass military spending bill Saturday and return to the health-care debate. After years of criticizing Democrats for not supporting the troops, just three Republicans supported the military funding. ...WaPo
