Josh Marshall on Passage of HCR

Josh Marshall boils down the meaning of last night's historic passage of health care reform in Talking Points Memo.

Even over the last two days you've seen a shifting of perspective as all the drama and angst of recent months recedes before the reality of final passage. There's no denying this is certainly the biggest and by almost any definition the first major social legislation in the United States in almost five decades. (Congress passed Medicare in 1965.)

Today, when David Frum wrote that this was turning out to be the GOP's Waterloo, he had two interlocking points -- one focused on policy, another political. The US has had several runs with major pieces of social legislation. And the record is that they don't get repealed. They're expanded and become embedded in the national political economy. That was what was at the heart of Bill Kristol's famous (or infamous) memo on reform from 1994. Once Health Care reform is passed; the middle class will like it. And there will be no repealing or doing away with it. And its success would create a new generation of Democrats. That was his fear.

To that end, Frum's policy point was, who cares if the Republicans take back Congress? Majorities come and go. But reform is permanent. For conservatives it's a catastrophic development and if they'd actually been part of the dialog they probably could have gotten a bill much more to their liking...But as I wrote earlier, even if they (Democrats) lose their majorities in November, they'll be able to say: This is what we used these majorities to do. And it was worth it.

Current cable news political coverage is obsessed with daily scorekeeping and loses sight of the big picture. Though Frum and Marshall are on opposite sides of the partisan fence, they share the ability to look past short-term political gamesmanship and see what matters. This makes them worth listening to.

--Ballard Burgher