Spineless majority

Digby bemoans one decidedly Beltway prediction for the health care bill in the Senate, that the House's abortion amendment has to be adopted by the Senate to appease Centrists so empowered by House moderates. Who vested that power to moderates? The spineless House liberals that allowed this reckless power play. The sacrifice is women's rights.

So restricting women's fundamental rights is a horse trade. But why should it be that instead of something else? Are all of these "centrists" anti-choice? (I don't think so.) They could, after all, give them an airport or an aircraft carrier instead. Maybe offer up a little deregulation on some special interest in their district. Why would an issue like this assuage them en masse?

Unless what you really want to do is show everyone that liberals are not in charge and that they have to feel (even more) pain, real pain, before they get their way. There is no reason other than political domination to demand this particular issue as the bargaining chip: it is an object lesson to liberals, particularly women, for getting too uppity.

Update:
41 House Democrats have sent a letter to Nancy Pelosi vowing to withhold a vote on the merged Senate-House health bill if the abortion provision remains.

Dear Madam Speaker:

As members of Congress we believe that women should have access to a full range of reproductive health care. Health care reform must not be misused as an opportunity to restrict women's access to reproductive health services.

The Stupak-Pitts amendment to H.R. 3962, The Affordable Healthcare for America Act, represents an unprecedented and unacceptable restriction on women's ability to access the full range of reproductive health services to which they are lawfully entitled. We will not vote for a conference report that contains language that restricts women's right to choose any further than current law.

And upon this, Chris Bowers is skeptical, as we all should be, of the lame Progressive caucus:

It is a nice threat, but I have mixed feelings about Progressive Blocks right now. They succeeded as a negotiating tactic to keep the public option alive to this point, but it was not the public option they were targeting. Also, Stupak's regressive block was able to force an amendment vote on the House floor, while the Progressive Block was unable to do so.

Overall, Progressive have advanced their influence, but still don't hold as much power as conservative Democrats. The basic reason for this is that House Progressives still haven't held together to defeat a bill because their demands were not met. Until they do so, it is unlikely anyone will take their threats seriously. Maybe they should kill the climate change bill once some horrifying version of it passed through the Senate.