Happy Hour Roundup
* Now that Al Franken has put Dems within reach of 60 votes in the Senate, Markos Moulitsas says that Harry Reid has “no more excuses.”
* Senate Dems could seat Franken as early as next week.
* HuffPo reports that the House GOPers who voted for the climate change bill have targets on their backs — and fellow Republicans are taking aim.
* Robert Gibbs is declining to say whether Obama is prepared to use a parliamentary maneuver to get health care through the Senate over a 50-vote threshold. One is tempted to imagine that Franken’s victory will make this question less significant, but that would be overly optimistic.
* Franken makes the obligatory claim that he shouldn’t be seen as an automatic 60th vote for Dems.
* Josh Green warns that the 60 votes are still a mirage.
* Dave Weigel marvels at Norm Coleman’s ability to look as if he’s leaving the race gracefully after a seven-month delay.
* Dick Cheney finally turns on former President Bush.
* You may recall that a group of Senators devoted to finding bipartisan compromise on health care recently dubbed themselves the “Coalition of the Willing.” Well, now Senator Bernie Sanders has decided to form the “Coalition of the Unwilling.” As in, unwilling to tolerate health care reform without a public option.
* Obama taps Joe Biden for a more active role on foreign policy.
* And liberal media critic Eric Boehlert and Bill Kristol agree on something: The Vanity Fair piece on Sarah Palin was an underhanded hit job.
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It looks to me like there’s some agreement between left and right that Dems now have “no excuses” now that they have the 60 votes. Wonder what to make of that.
As for the significance of using the reconciliation measure (no filibuster) for health care reform, it is HUGE. Look how much compromise was done to the Stimulus bill, just to get past the filibuster. Luring the 50th instead of the 60th could mean the difference between a good bill and a horrible waste of money, no help for anyone bill. With reconciliation rules, you can ignore all Republicans plus Bayh, Nelson and eight other blue dogs. The trick will to not accept anything less than great before Oct. 15, since that is when the new budget resolution with the reconciliation provision kicks in.
Just thought I’d note that in where yesterday we’d been wondering whether Pawlenty’s precise phrasing might allow wiggle room for a refusal to sign Franken’s certification (”if the court forces me to do it”) and given the speed and simplicity of the certification, one might now suppose that the language had a function of giving cover to Pawlenty (re the base) for doing what political calculation determined he really had to do to be a viable national candidate in 2012.
And, I have to say, Michael Gerson’s column this morning is (notwithstanding the unnecessary and logically inappropriate Iran analogy) really very good. He does this about one in every twenty columns.
With regard to Coleman and what looked like an almost graceful exit, the man has both considerable intelligence and considerable political skills. His problem has always been that he doesn’t work from principle or principled compromise. He’s an opportunist through and through. That’s his whole political life.