Negotiating with Hostage Takers

Other than offering a few face saving gestures, like letting someone make a phone call to his wife, or letting bad guys surrender through a rear door to avoid a crush of photographers, it is usually dangerous to give in to demands from hostage takers. And it is U.S. government policy never to pay ransoms for the safe release of hostages

When Democratic centrists get away with holding national legislation hostage to their whims through use of filibuster threats, they become no better than legislative kidnappers demanding a ransom for their procedural votes. This isn't about Democratic Senators voting their conscience on a bill before Congress, it is about them threatening to join a Republican filibuster against a central part of the Democratic agenda, and we should no more be negotiating further compromises with with them than we would with any hostage takers. It only emboldens them further. The ransom they are demanding for the release of health care reform legislation is an arm and a leg. Of the hostage.

So called centrists in the Democratic Party wield great power in great part because we allow them to. They long ago learned that "just say no" works like a charm to force other Democrats to just say "yes" to whatever they demand. Now they no longer even feel constrained to simply threaten to vote against Democratic legislation, now they feel empowered to voice threats that they will filibuster alongside Republicans, and they demand respect and rewards while doing so. We don't need their votes badly enough to pay their price, we just need 51 and we have those. Might as well start paying ransom to Somali pirates as cave in their legislative blackmail.

Previous attempts at "reasonable" negotiations with health care legislation pirates have resulted in: a) forgoing any real discussion of a single payer system, b) abandoning "Medicare plus 5", c) refusing to allow most Americans the choice of a Public Option, d) shrinking the pool of those who still qualify for a public option down to 6 million in the House version of reform, and d) allowing States to opt out of even offering a public option in the Senate version of reform.

If the current Public Option gets any tinier it will require a microscope to be visible. Reconciliation is an option - it is time to use it.

I would add that the Dem leadership serves the role of corrupt police in this game. They can serve their corporate masters by paying off the blue dog kidnappers, and then claim to have had no choice. They get their share on the back-end in the form of political support. The program works out for everyone... oh, except the American people.

It's like a rigged poker game where one player knows in advance that all s/he needs to do to win a hand is dramatically raise the ante. It doesn't take a card shark to know that if no one ever calls a player's bluff, that s/he will brazenly start playing for higher stakes expecting their counterparts to keep on folding. There is no negative consequences to restrain bluffing once a player becomes convinced that it is always a winning strategy. It is so obvious a strategy that it does raise questions about the integrity of the game when it is never openly challenged.