Forecasting the Chances of Snowe

So the calculus is One Republican > Thirty Democrats?

Around 60-80 percent of Americans support a public option. The CBO thinks that the public option would help keep costs down. So why is Snowe's approach "centrist"? That seems to make sense only if centrism is 100% about the emotions and fantasy lives of politicians, and 0% about policy.
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Thanks for the preview of the Obama team's strategy-- makes a lot of sense.

Thanks, Jay. You rock, especially with that headline. Snowe has gotten love and affection lately. Pardon my cynicism, but is she still playing hard to get to keep the attention? Since Ben (not Bill) “Mutual of Omaha” Nelson is still fighting the PO, I'd say try to swap her vote for his …but NOT at the expense of giving up the PO. Keep the PO but just get cloture. But thanks for your horse-handicapping list. Since Biden helped win Snowe over on the stimulus, can he seduce her again? (figuratively, I presume …alas) I do, and for an “insurance vote” (pun intended) it's worth trying to play Collins and Snowe off each other to poach both votes. Maybe Voinovich can be reached but he's a hardnosed fiscal long shot (just glad this isn't a vote on torture bans, but I digress). If we lie and say Sarah flip-flopped and now supports the PO will that win McCain? (Did you get Cantwell's b-day song on video or cell phone?)
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…and Jay, I saw your weekend tweet about beer / spirits drinking order. I don't drink beer but do wine / spirits. I think pacing yourself matters more than the order, including eating appetizers. Better yet, if you like beer and spirits, combine both! Boilermakers, Irish car bombs, and flaming Dr. Peppers will do the trick (do blow out the FDP flame, please!).

"Add her name to the growing list of former Republican leaders (Bill Frist, Bob Dole) and you get some semblance of political cover for vulnerable Dems at the polls next November."

I suppose to be a Repub is never to be vulnerable.

Firstly, I'm about ready to explode in a burst of DHL-delivered Ragu soaked madness. F@cking temper the obnoxious popup assault please.

Secondly, in a parallel universe, where reality is conveyed:

"Good Day for Baucus; Bad Day for Real Reform"
Jon Walker

"I'm sure Chairman Baucus, Senate Majority Leader Reid, and President Obama are all pleased that Republican senator Olympia Snowe voted for the Baucus bill in committee. Their goals have long been to pass anything they could slap the label “health care reform” on and declare victory. Sadly, Snowe's support could signal a bad day for real reform.Snowe has long been opposed to some of the most important elements of reform. I'm not just referring to her opposition to a real public option and her support for a worthless trigger proposal.

Snowe opposes a real employer mandate, and instead favors a disastrously stupid “free rider” provision. It could have serious consequences for low-income workers.

She is against giving the exchanges the power to negotiate with private insurance companies. This is a provision that should help keep down the cost of health care. It would save individuals money and the government money. Snowe fears it is too much government involvement. John Kingsdale, who runs Massachusetts's exchange, called Snowe's insistence that the exchanges not have the power to negotiate price with insurance companies a recipe for disaster.

Just today, during the committee hearing, she reaffirmed her support for “national plans.” This would allow health insurance companies to sell national plans in any states. Individuals state would lose the power to regulate these insurance plans sold in their states. The national plans would be exempt from all minimum benefit requirements mandated by the state legislature. This has been for a long time one of the top goals of the for-profit health insurance industry.

These are only the few changes that I know Snowe requested. Other good ideas, like a minimum medical loss ratio for insurance sold on the exchange, a stronger regulator, and a better defined minimum benefits package, could also have been excluded at the request of Snowe. For Example, Cantwell's “basic health plan” amendment did not get Snowe's vote in committee. It may be left out of the merged bill because Snowe opposes it.

I fear all of these terrible ideas from Sen. Snowe will make their way into the final bill. Obama has signaled his desperation to win the support of Snowe, and seems willing to accept any idea she has regardless how bad. Snowe's vote may make it easier for the Democratic leadership to declare a political victory, but the cost of winning Snowe's support could be that health care reform is a policy failure. In which case, it is the American people who are the real losers."

"Firstly, I'm about ready to explode in a burst of DHL-delivered Ragu soaked madness. F@cking temper the obnoxious popup assault please"
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I beg you to listen to our friend from the East.

I don't mind the ads. I just mind when the script delivering them is messed up.

Way OT, but Taibbi has some excellent observations about the Nobel "Peace" Prize.

I had a roomate once who in a fit of anger at another roomate took a four gallon vat of spaghetti sauce and flung it at his victim, coating every surface of the kitchen and even a section of the dining room carpet in red muck.

That was years ago. I wonder why it suddenly came to mind?

And Frist walked back his support. I believe he now supports "health care reform" but not any actual legislation that is under discussion.
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Are these ad pop ups intended to tamp down the number of comments?

Democrat plan to save the US from its health care woes.
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Tax all the middle class who have health care insurance now at 40%. So if you have a plan that just costs let's say 12,000 dollars a year, you pay $5000 THOUSAND dollars, per year.
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If you are not lucky to have health care insurance, they are going to MANDATE you get it, if not PAY a "fine" of upwards of $3,000 THOUSAND dollars, per year. Not a lifetime penalty, but PER YEAR
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Yes, and for those of you on Medicare, look forward to over $500 BILLION in cuts to your already existing health care benefits!!! Can we say rationed care anyone, because there will not be any doctors who will take Medicare as a reimbursement any longer?
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Yes indeedy, CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN!!!!!

"(all along most of us read this as one person: Snowe)."
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JNS-Why in the world could not you people in the media just come out and say that in the first place?
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This might seem minor to you, but it bugs me to no end that we are playing this game like there is some republican support for this bill other than Snow. Like there is some form of bipartisanship ever going to happen here. All the other republicans you and Karen have been citing have either been disingenious, told to STFU by the leadership, walked back their comments on their own or are in no position to have any effect on how the final vote comes out.
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In turn the democrats and republicans who don't want reform are getting cover from the fact you guys are chasing ghosts.

While it is early days it may be worthwhile to work on Lugar and Voinovich who can buck the Republicans. The emphasis on Snowe , and perhaps, Collins may well distort the debate since neither is a "reliable" vote on cloture.

Lieberman is a lost cause and Dick Durbin does his standard Democratic cave-in tp by making out that Lieberman's chairmanship is sacrosanct. This guy is a joke and should be told he is not need in the caucus. His best role is as one of the three clowns: in company with McCain and Graham.

The Dems have to grow a pair or get out of the way.

Frankly they are pretty pitiful as a majority in both houses.

Art, the MSM is the only place where Bill Frist or Olympia Snowe matters. Job one for "journalists" is maintaining this illusion, that the GOP is relevant or maintains significant influence. As GG said brilliantly yesterday:

"It's often forgotten or obscured, but the central political fact now is that the Democratic Party controls everything in Washington -- from the branches of government to favors doled out to lobbyists to the policies that Congress and the President enact. Wars that are fought and bills that are or are not passed and policies that are maintained are, by definition, Democratic actions. The dreaded Right can't dictate or stop anything. That's the burden of having massive majorities in all areas -- everything that happens is the result of what the Democratic Party does, and that's why the divisions and conflicts that truly matter are ones with the party itself. The "right v. left" and even "Democrat v. GOP" drama dominates most of our discourse, yet at this point it is a distracting and largely irrelevant food fight. It's the Democrats who have won the last two elections by large margins and wield all the power, and increasingly the defining conflict is between those whose overarching allegiance is to Obama and the Party as ends in themselves, and those who see those things as mere means to more important ends."

[...] Follow this link: Snowe Day: Will One GOP Senator Make a Difference on Health Care? (Time Magazine) [...]

[...] bill today now opens the door to broaden GOP support for a health care reform bill, according to an analysis on Time’s political blog, Swampland: It opens the door – even just a peek – to leveraging Snowe’s vote into widening GOP [...]

'Olympia Snowe didn't make a liar out of Max Baucus, who had been predicting for months that he would have at least some GOP support...'

Jay,
If Baucus had received no GOP support would he have been a 'liar' for making an incorrect prediction? I know it's not a big deal, but in these days of harsh rhetoric and outrageous partisan attacks, terms like 'liar' are being thrown around much too freely. Please try not to use coarse terms that exaggerate the nature of what was actually a rather ordinary statement.

Taibbi strikes me as a man with a colossally large mouth who either doesn't get what he's writing about, or who does get it and doesn't care to adjust his prose to account for facts. Waxing on about video game culture in the US does not particularly explain the vote of the relatively few, older Norwegian voters who actually get the prize. His shots at Gore seem gratuitous as well as cheap, though I'm sure that in Matt's mind writing as an iconoclast on politics is a far greater peace-inducing activity than being a professional politician pushing environmentalism, however watered down.

Maybe Taibbi's a better writer than I give him credit for, but my only experience of him has been from links on this blog, and none of them have shown him in a particularly good light.

Anon, setting aside our diff takes on Taibbi, and let's ignore his throwaway reference to Gore's award too--do you have any misgivings about his larger pts? Not merely his shock re: Obama's as-yet unearned prize, but the larger pattern of Nobel/western embrace of tastefully advocated war culture. IMO, neither Gore nor Obama is particularly important in light of that far more sweeping condemnation.

JNS:

Your insight here is appreciated.

anon.....Arafat "sincerely" tried to end the Palistenian conflict? Are you serious? He walked away from a deal during the Clinton years that included 9 of his 10 demands. You aren't going to do better than that in any negotiaion. He wasn't sincerely interested in anything other than his own retention of his limited power. Please don't distort reality to fit your views.

I can't believe so many people think it is ok for the government to require people to buy anything. I know some will try to argue car insurance, but you can avoid that by not having a car and riding public transportation. You can only avoid the requirement to buy health insurance if you aren't alive. This is ludicrious and TOTALLY against every idea enshrined in the Constitution and Bill of Rights. We don't FORCE people to buy anything in this country. And I don't want to hear the "it will bring more people into the pool and lower costs" nonsense. My car insurance would be less if we required everyone to buy cars and insurance, my house insurance would be cheaper if we required everyone to buy houses and insurance, I could go on.... The point is, it is NEVER a good idea to use the force or implied threat of force (tax fines, etc) to compell Americans to buy anything. Remember, once you set the precedence, the opposition will use it the next time they are in power and you will be subject to it even if you totally disagree. Somehow, I don't think the Libs commenting here would like it if the government required them to purchase war bonds during a time of war. However, that is exactly the kind of power you want to give this government because you agree with the current president. Remember one thing, the powers you are creating will long outlast our current president and at some point will be used to enact an agenda you don't support. Then, will you cry about the governments methods? The method of doing something is very important and to totally disregard it because you support the end objective is short-sighted and dangerous.

Anyone care to comment on why you don't want to take the Sen and Rep to task for their role in the high cost of healthcare? Why do you not have a problem with the government not allowing you to shop insurance across state lines in order to improve competition and bring down cost? I would be much willing to look at healthcare reform if we would first remove all the roadblocks currently in place of real competition first. Also, why nobody condemns the "evil" Blue Cross/Blue Shield. They are one of the biggest supporters of the bill. Why? Because they are currently the ONLY insurance company allowed to sell nationwide. They have been bestowed a place of power and want to keep that power. They are FAR from the impartial good citizen they are made out to be. Dems are as guilty as using the public coffers to pay back their supporters as they accused Bush of doing during his years in office, but see nothing wrong with it now. It's wrong in both places. Take your rose-colored glasses off when looking at guys/gals on your side and let's get something meaningful done.

We really need a new government public option health plan. Hell No! The government can't even manage the health plans they have now. VA,Tri-Care Medicare and Medicad(states manage-federal gov. pays for most of it.)
If, we get the new government public option health plan,my thinking is that everyone will be on it in 5-7 years. Why?, because employers will see it cost less for the government plan than private ins.
Look at the health plans in England and Canada.
Third-rate health care with long waits.Health care boards determine who gets good care, poor care and no care except meds(a lot of seniors).
The only good government health plans are the Medicare Advantage programs where plans compete for members. Our great change president wants to do away with the only good gov. health plans.