A Health Care Role for Hillary
As long as we are talking so much about her options these days, here's one: After lobbying unsuccessfully to have a health care reform subcommittee created for her to chair on Teddy Kennedy's Health Committee, Hillary Clinton is being asked to head one of three task forces that he is creating on the subject, two Democratic sources tell me. Hers would deal with the issue of coverage.
Unless, of course, she goes to the State Department instead. Which she probably will.
UPDATE: Here's the announcement:
SENATOR KENNEDY ESTABLISHES COMMITTEE WORKING GROUPS ON HEALTH REFORM
Washington, DC— Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, today established three working groups of the committee to deal with critical issues of health reform. Under Senator Kennedy's direction, the working groups will concentrate on three areas essential to comprehensive reform: (1) prevention and public health, (2) improvements in the quality of care, and (3) insurance coverage. Senator Tom Harkin will lead the working group on prevention and public health, Senator Barbara Mikulski will lead the working group on improvements in quality, and Senator Hillary Clinton will lead the working group on insurance coverage. Senator Kennedy released the following statement:
“Our committee is fortunate to have the services of major leaders who are committed to improving health care for the American people. Senator Harkin, Senator Mikulski, and Senator Clinton have generously offered to step forward and assume an expanded role on critical aspects of health reform. I commend them for their leadership, and I look forward very much to working with them, with all our colleagues on the committee and throughout Congress, and with the Obama Administration to achieve the goal at long last of quality, affordable health care for all Americans.”
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Why not retire from politics, work at a law firm and make lots of money?
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Or write another book? There's seems to be a market for losing candidates these days.
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This stuff is so inside baseball. -
So Kennedy is offering Hillary a role of a bit player in his show? Really? I realise the Dems have behaved stupidly in the Lieberman matter. But is this another manifestation of solid thinking about how you deal with a fellow Democrat, who, in spite of all the nay saying, put up a pretty impressive perfomance in support of Obama after she lost.
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KT here--
Bitter: Yes, a real window into how the Senate really works, isn't it?
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KT -- Appreciate the candor!
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As my Native American friends would say, Hillary has powerful medicine, with a constituency maybe even larger and more faithful now precisely because she lost in the primaries. And she doesn't have the burdens and visibility of the presidency on which to be judged. Hillary needn't worry about Kennedy or anyone else, as she'll be an extremely powerful figure long after he's gone, God love him.
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I think the order is: Committee -> Task Force -> Posse -> Entourage -> Crew -> That One. Hillary wanted Committee or nothing at all.
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Why is Senator Clinton being treated with less respect by the Democratic party than Joe Lieberman, who isn't a Democrat?
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KT here--
Cedar et al: Yes, that is how it looks to the outside world. Inside the Senate, she is yet another failed presidential candidate in a place where there are plenty of those, and no one is inclined to move over so that a less junior member can move up. As you may recall, as it became clear that she was going to lose in her bid for the nomination, there was a lot of speculation that she would return to the Senate and become Majority Leader. I never took that seriously. There simplay are too many people ahead of her in line.
I think, by the way, the same dynamic was at work in the Lieberman situation to some degree. In the end, the club takes care of its own.
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PNNTO: It's all about the chromosomes, Paul. And who her husband is.
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KT here--
Sorry, I meant //junior// not //less junior.// Preview would be my friend. If we had preview.
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KT -- If not having preview saved someone's job at Time, then I don't mind not having preview. If not, then @#$%^%$#@.
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KT here--
No, Andy, in this case, it really isn't. It's all about enormous egos and seniority. Tom Foley, before he was Speaker, once explained to me that seniority was really the reason that African-Americans actually got ahead in the House. There were racist southerners there who would have cut off their right arms before they would give a powerful job to an African-American, but they would cut off BOTH arms before they violated the seniority system.
Speaking of which, let's watch that Dingell-Waxman fight. Congress is the only place a 69-year-old guy could be a "young turk."
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"In the end, the club takes care of its own"
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That's what I was observing in another thread-
Convicted felons don't get expelled. People who campaign against your party get rewarded.
The Senate really is a club above anything else. -
KT -- The Foley story is very interesting. I can hope that Waxman can beat Dingell, but I wouldn't make book on it.
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If it is all about seniority why bother with this charade?
I'm starting to think this really is part of it
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Asked what it would mean if Lieberman kept his chairmanship, one Senate Democratic aide said bluntly: "The left has been foiled again. They can rant and rage but they still do not put the fear into folks to actually change their votes. Their influence would be in question." -
Wait a minute. Seniority is a valid criteria for power-sharing. What is Clinton's claim over other Senators on the health care issue - having failed at it in the past? Being famous?
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"What is Clinton's claim over other Senators on the health care issue - having failed at it in the past?"
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One strike and you're out!
Hasn't Senator Clinton worked on health broadly and child health care specifically for decades? -
It's relative, Paul. Relative to other Senators. I'm defending seniority as one very valid tool for distributing leadership positions among a group of people who all have anecdotal claims to desired turf. That's how seniority came to be an organizational construct used in a variety of similarly ambiguous situations
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KT here--
Also, on the Lieberman thing, it seems to me that losing a chairmanship is a rare thing in Congress in general, but even rarer in the Senate, absent an indictment or something. Can anyone remember when the last time was that it happened in the Senate? (Other than when a guy like Thurmond or Byrd gets elderly and frail, and is persuaded to give it up.)There was a huge fight over House Armed Services in the 1980s, where Les Aspin ousted a guy named Mel Price. And Newt ignored some seniority rules in handing out chairmanships. But I can't remember anyone in the Senate really fighting for one and losing it. Commenters?
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Senators on the committee with higher rank.
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Christopher Dodd (CT)
Tom Harkin (IA)
Barbara A. Mikulski (MD)
Jeff Bingaman (NM)
Patty Murray (WA)
Jack Reed (RI)
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Other than seniority I am unsure what their claim is. -
No fault of hers, but thoroughly sick of Hillary Clinton already.
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pour rather than "one very valid tool" I am reading all this as it is the "only" valid tool.
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I'm not sure I sign on to the "anecdotal claims" either. People are qualified by experience or they or not. Of course by varying degrees. -
It's worth remembering that the Senate is snotty and elitist by design, not chance. Less members. Longer terms. I know I'm in the minority here, but I approve in general terms of the clubbish nature when taken in context of the larger checks and balances of the entire system. We are days out from an election that brought clear one-party rule. However, that's not always the case and I like the idea of the Senate caretaking its status as a fuse as a bulwark against future chaos. Reasonable people can disagree over the particulars of Lieberman's case, but in general a little snootiness on the part of the Senate is not a bug; it's a feature.
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I still don't understand why Hillary is credible on health reform. Cheney and Rumsfeld weren't credible on war policy BEFORE Iraq because they had already screwed one up (Vietnam). Hillary has already screwed up health reform once (1994). Why do people keep wanting those that have proven they are incapable of doing a job to keep trying that job in the hopes they'll eventually get it right?
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KT here--
P-NNTO and Pour: Rising in the leadership, by the way, has its own ladder, one that is based on personal relationships that are not always apparent to the outside world. (Murtha, for instance, was an early mentor and patron of Nancy Pelosi; George Mitchell was one for Daschle.) Harry Reid, while often criticized outside the Senate Chamber as being an ineffective public face, has a huge reservoir of support internally. So while many pundits in the blogosphere and elsewhere saw it as "obvious" that Hillary Clinton would become Senate Majority Leader, it was anything but.
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