It looks like we’ll get a health-care bill. A castrated, eviscerated, anemic,denatured, devolved shadow of what progressives have been seeking for the better part of a century—a pyrrhic victory for the Obama Administration.
There are many steps yet to be taken: a series of cloture votes in the senate to prevent filibustering before passage, followed by weeks if not months of wrangling between house and senate members to reconcile the vastly different versions passed by each.

The last rites will be performed over the public option in that conference committee. I predicted its death several months ago, but, much as I like being right, nothing would make me happier being proven wrong. However, I can’t find any knowledgeable observers who think I will. RIP.

The worst part of the whole mess is that most of the surviving benefits of the final bill—other than coverage for poor children—will not kick in for a year or two after passage, so its positive values will not be quickly recognized and the Democrats will lose many house and senate seats in 2010.

The Republicans have been politically shrewd in making anathema what started out the year as an extremely popular idea whose time had come. But clever and effective as they were with their tea parties, invocations of death panels and warnings of totalitarian takeovers, it couldn’t have happened without the collaboration of a batch of greedy, selfish, egomaniacal and, in one case, nastily vengeful Democrats.

Humiliation might also have been averted if the Obamans had adopted a more forceful stand from the very beginning and clearly outlined what they wanted in a health-care bill. Instead, rather than repeat the errors of the Clinton Administration by presenting a complete and inalterable package to the congress, they erred to the other extreme by presenting little except a few suggestions and made no public case until it was too late—the tea-partiers had done their dirty deeds.

We should also remember that health care was never Obama’s strongest suit. Of the three major contenders in the primary races, he had the weakest proposal. John Edwards had the most progressive, while Hillary Clinton’s was similar to Obama’s although stronger because it included mandates for buying insurance. Ironically Obama attacked her from the right on the mandate issue—which he now champions.

So now most progressives in the congress and the most important progressive columnist in the country, Paul Krugman, revive their timeworn slogan, “Half a loaf is better than none.”

Yep. So starved are we that we’ll even settle for half of a half of a half a loaf and relish every crumb.

Given the rules of that most undemocratic body, the US Senate, it will be that way for a long time to come unless we change those rules.

By what norms of democracy should it take more than a majority of an already imbalanced and less than democratically structured body to pass a piece of legislation? Why should a 60 percent majority—60 senators—be required?

It’s already bad enough when states with populations not much larger than a Chicago ward get as many senators as California or New York. But when a party wins exactly 60 percent of the senate, that gives any one rebel from any dinky state the opportunity to blow up a piece of serious legislation by permitting it to be filibustered to death.

Thus Joe Lieberman, the unkosher butcher, by threatening to filibuster, chops up the bill by ordering the removal of a plan that would extend Medicare to people aged 55—a modest substitute for the public option. The odious Lieberman once favored such legislation, but because he hates the progressives who helped defeat him in a senate primary, he takes his revenge on people in need. And to think he was almost vice president.

Such traitors would not have the power to destroy without the filibuster—which is simply a rule that can be eliminated by a simple majority vote.

When the GOP ruled the senate with fewer than 60 votes and Democrats threatened to filibuster George W. Bush’s right-wing judicial appointments, the Republicans threatened the “nuclear option”—eliminate the filibuster.

It’s time Democrats got smart and exercised that option themselves instead of being held captive by Liebermaniacs. If not, we’ll be settling for less than half a loaf well into the 22nd Century.

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Don Rose is a regular columnist for the Chicago Daily Observer