Neither any version of Single Payer/Medicare for All nor any version of any other progressive legislation will advance under the leadership of Pelosi and Hoyer - for two terrible reasons.
The first reason is that any vote on progressive bills would allow progressives to identify the holdout legislators and focus their efforts on the holdouts. If M4A is blocked in a committee by four or five Democrats, progressives will know who they are and can easily find out how much the health insurance industry gave to them in “campaign contributions.” Progressives would know where to mount primary challenges, where to recruit challengers, and where to direct money and other resources to replace the unprogressive Democrats. Contrast that with the current situation, which is best reflected in Hillary’s assertion that “It’ll never happen.” Hillary’s statement is artfully vague and discouraging. It is unparalleled as an emotional sledge hammer because it contains not a glimmer of hope. It triggers despair in M4A proponents who hear it, and because it is so vague, it prevents those proponents from even starting to focus their efforts to advance M4A. An impotent progressive movement is what Pelosi and Hoyer want.
The second reason is that a floor vote would be a corporate Democrat’s nightmare, regardless of the vote’s outcome. If M4A passed the House, it would certainly go nowhere in the Senate, but passage by the House Democrats would in effect weld M4A to the Democratic Party’s next platform. M4A would become inescapable and irresistable. If the vote were heavily in favor of M4A but not enough for passage, the holdouts would again be easy to identify and to pressure or replace, and the “impossibility” of passage asserted by Hillary would be disproven. Proponents would have hope, and with hope comes motivation. Voters, both progressive and moderates, would use support for M4A as a litmus test in the 2020 Congressional election. If M4A were soundly defeated - something that would require extensive Democratic Party opposition - the Party’s core corporate soul would be exposed. Such exposure is not a policy problem for the Democrats, given that both halves of the duopoly have the same policy goals, but it would mean that Democrats would remain a minority by discouraging progressive sympathizers whose votes are necessary for Democrats to win elections. Pelosi, wants Democrats to win because majority/minority status is an ego issue, and ego issues are important to her.
These pressures apply to all progressive issues, and the Pelosi/Hoyer team’s first response will be to keep a tight lid on all such legislation and on the new progressives in the DP caucus as well.
If and when a progressive issue gains too much momentum for Pelosi and Hoyer to squash it, the fight will be trench warfare over the details. “Pete” described this scenario best in this CD post of mid-November:
“It’s important to focus on the details. When the pressure for ‘Medicare for all’ becomes so overwhelming that Congress as a whole capitulates & passes something they’ll call ‘Medicare for all’, expect them to try and shove some watered down version of Medicare Advantage down everybody’s throats, with insurance companies still having a big hand in the till, high deductibles, copays and HMO-style limited choice…without continuing pressure, it will still be a long way from Single Payer.”
For progressives, the moral of this story is the same as always: Vote Green!
