Rep. Steve King will not run for the open Iowa Senate seat

By Richard K. Barry

I will not run for Senate in 2014. A Senate race takes me out of urgent battles in Congress that can't wait until 2015. Many thanks to all.

— Steve King (@SteveKingIA) May 4, 2013

And with that Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) announced that he would not run for the Senate seat to be left vacant by Tom Harkin's (D-Iowa) decision not to seek re-election. 

There is little doubt that King would have been the man to beat for the GOP nomination, though some in his own party were less sure he could win in the general. Gov. Terry Branstad said as much.

The Washington Post noted that "King is an outspoken and staunchly conservative Republican with a knack for stoking controversy with his remarks," which is something of an understatement. 

Other Republicans who have said they will not run are state Agriculture Secretary Bill Northey and Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds.

Former U.S. attorney Matt Whitaker, state Sen. Brad Zaun and Secretary of State Matt Schultz are viewed as possible Republican candidates. None of the three have ruled themselves out.

On the Democratic side, Rep. Bruce Braley has the field to himself, and is the presumptive nominee.

Over the past few month stories have begun to appear about the Republican Party having a difficult time recruiting top flight candidates in key states. 

Well, that could be a problem for them.

Iowa stubborn: Will Republicans pick extremist Steve King in 2014?

By Mustang Bobby

The news this weekend that Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) would not run for re-election in 2014 set off giddy hopes in Republican circles that they would pick up another easy Senate seat. But so far, at least one of the folks who have tossed their hat into the ring is the kind of candidate who sounds like they'd take the Iowa seat down the rabbit hole of Tea Party hardcore wingers, giving the Democrats hope that they can hold on:

Among them is six-term Rep. Steve King, 63, a conservative from western Iowa who has represented about half of the state's 99 counties. He's never ruled out a Senate bid even if it meant challenging Harkin. Moran believes the prospect of an open seat race would be appealing to his former boss.

For King, one GOP strategist said, the primary would be easier than the general election. A top party official speculated some Republicans would have reservations about running King in a statewide ticket.

Despite those misgivings about the outspoken King running on a statewide ticket, Moran thinks the party – both on a state and national level – might find it "refreshing to have Steve King at top of ticket to drive the message and definition of the party."

There are a lot of words I can think of to describe Rep. King, but "refreshing" isn't one of them.

Read more »

Why losers run for presidential nominations

By Richard K. Barry

We've all had good fun chuckling at the succession of losers tossed up as frontrunners in the Republican presidential nomination process. It seems that simply hanging around long enough will mean getting a turn at leading the pack. Now it's Gingrich. Yesterday it was Cain. A little while ago it was Perry and before that Bachmann, even Trump for a couple of hours, once upon a time. And then, in all the jockeying, Romney never really goes away.

To ask the question why so many marginal candidates continue to stay in the hunt is to, I suppose, prompt the answer that this thing is so unsettled anyone could win. But that's not really true. And despite what has happened, I still think it's going to be Romney and that most people, even the candidates themselves, know it.

Typically, though, marginal candidates run for these big prizes all the time, and do it without any real chance of success, though their efforts are far from in vain. No, there are good reasons to hang around for at least a little while and maybe longer.

Does anyone doubt that Herman Cain has been running in order to sell books and maybe get his own show on Fox? Up until recently it was a given that Gingrich was running to raise the profile of his brand in order to make money further down the road. Trump's brief foray was obviously a publicity stunt. And though Bachmann has been tanking in the polls for some time, she too has a new book that could use some free publicity. Given the fact that she gave up her day job as a member of the House, she'll need to generate some income when this is all over.

Then their are the no-hopers who use the high profile of a nomination fight to promote pet issues and political perspectives as is the case with Ron Paul's wing-nut libertarian views as well as with Rick Santorum's relentless efforts to push his hard-core anti-abortion stance and other issues important to social conservatives.

A recent post on the CBS News website addressed this issue and pointed out, correctly, that history shows future leadership posts -- and presidential runs -- can result from failed nomination bids.

Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa waged a long-shot bid for the Democratic nomination in 1992, getting forced out after the early primaries. He endorsed candidate Bill Clinton, kept his seat in the Senate and became an influential voice in the Clinton White House.

Romney lost his first presidential bid in 2008 but used that experience to build a network of political and financial supporters serving him well in this election cycle.

In Harkin's case and those like him, there may be some gambling going on too. You get in early, run a bit of a campaign, look around to see who you think could actually have a shot and then throw your support there. If you're right, you might get a cabinet post or ambassadorship out of the deal, or just have a lot more clout with the administration you helped win.

In Romney's case, he ran the first time to set up the next time. If I'm not mistaken, Obama had the same sort of thing in mind before it became clear that this time was going to be his time.

In our media-obsessed word, fame is everything. It's the currency that really matters the most, and for many months every four years, the cameras are rolling more or less non-stop on a group of would-be presidents, which always seems to include a subset who are not-ready-for-prime-time, but there they are.

Of course, there is always a long-shot chance that an obscure candidate will vault to the head of the pack and actually win. Politics is so full of that sort of story that every candidate thinks it possible, if all goes right, to win. No matter how hard to imagine, no candidate believes it impossible that he or she could be victorious. That's simply not the way politicians and prospective politicians are hard wired.

So, it's hard to fault them for trying to keep their mugs in front of us for as long as they can. There are lots of reasons that just being in the game, on the stage night after night, is worth the trouble.

Unfortunately for us, we have to watch theses trainwrecks perform because it is one of the costs of living with this form of government. What was it again Churchill said about democracy?

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

Obama, Democrats ready to move forward on health-care reform

By Michael J.W. Stickings

It looks like the process has been worked out:

Sen. Tom Harkin told POLITICO that Senate Democratic leaders have decided to go the reconciliation route. The House, he said, will first pass the Senate bill after Senate leaders demonstrate to House leaders that they have the votes to pass reconciliation in the Senate.

It's not clear how Senate Democrats will "demonstrate" their commitment to use reconciliation to pass so-called patches to the Senate bill -- remember, reconciliation won't be used for the entire package, or even most of it, just for a few relatively minor changes -- but it could be something like a letter signed by at least 51 of them.

The bigger question, though, is whether House Democrats have the votes to pass the Senate bill, and that, for now, is where all the real drama is. Some who voted Yes the first time may vote No now, perhaps because of weakened anti-abortion provisions, perhaps because reform isn't popular back home (and they think they can only win by rushing to the center and embracing the Republicans), perhaps because they've bought into all the right-wing propaganda -- or perhaps because, if they're on the left, they object to fact that the public option is no longer in play. (There is indeed great concern that the Senate bill will lose progressives in the House, which could be a disaster. Seriously, while I admire and generally agree with these progressives, now is not the time to hold out. Doing so could hand a major victory to the Republicans, endanger the Democratic majority, and set back health-care reform for another generation. Better this bill, which is still significant, than nothing at all.)

What Pelosi needs is for the loss of those votes to be offset by members moving the other way, from No the first time to Yes now. And there should be some -- perhaps those who are not running for re-election and so don't need to pander to a frightened electorate, perhaps those who finally see that it is in the best interests of all Democrats that reform be passed, even if the reform bill itself is flawed and inadequate, perhaps those on the left who understand that this is it, that it's now or never, or at least not for a long, long time, and who, as I suggest above, agree that this bill is better than nothing, perhaps even those in the center who are persuaded by skeptical Senate centrists, like Bayh, Nelson, and Prior, who "recognize the political imperative of passing a bill and are endorsing it openly."

I don't want to be overly optimistic, let alone delusional, but this seems to be trending in the right direction.

**********

And it helps that President Obama is all in now, too, demanding an up-or-down vote, embracing a few Republican ideas but generally seeming prepared to move forward without any Republican support.

(Which, as we've known for a long time now, isn't coming. Which begs the question, why reach out to obstructionist Republicans and skeptical Democratic centrists instead of to enthusiastic liberals and progressives with, say, a robust public option and broad Medicare expansion? Well, because the votes wouldn't have been there in the Senate and perhaps wouldn't be there in either house now. But that was then, before initial passage, when 60 Senate votes were needed. Now that we've passed that point, and now that reconciliation is on the table, it's not clear how making the bill even less progressive makes it more likely to pass the House, unless there really are too many centrists to appease. Couldn't a union of 51+ reconciliation-bound Senate Democrats and 216+ House Democrats have been formed in support of a more progressive bill (including patches)? Well, I've said before that Obama's strategy seems to make a lot of sense, and I'll stick to that now. Let's just hope that Reid and Pelosi and the rest of the Democratic bean-counters on Capitol Hill know what they're doing.)

Anyway, as Jonathan Cohn notes:

[I]f Obama on Wednesday was implicitly giving up on his hopes for constructive, bipartisan governing, he wasn't giving up on his hopes for what governing would achieve. He ran for president on a promise to tackle the nation's most challenging problems -- and, since winning election, he's gleefully defied those who warned him he was trying to do too much. Nowhere has that been more true than on the issue of health care. At any point in the last few months but particularly in the wake of the Massachusetts election, it would have been easy to back away from comprehensive reform -- to cut a deal, be done with it, and move on. Instead, Obama on Wednesday committed himself more fully to comprehensive reform than he has at any time since this effort started. There's no backing off now.

Obama has made his mistakes and the plan he's put forward has its flaws. But I don't think he gets enough credit for the determination he's showing now. Americans always say they want leaders who lead rather than follow -- who do what they think is right rather than what they think is popular. And liberals, in particular, say they want politicians who will think big and pursue far-reaching reforms, rather than triangulate their way with incremental measures. Say what you will about Obama, but he's living up to both ideals--as much as any president in my lifetime.

The proof is in the pudding, as they say, and so I won't go quite that far. Yet. There has been far too much dithering and poor leadership on the part of Obama and the White House -- and I say that as one who has generally given the president the benefit of the doubt on this and other key issues and who considers himself nothing if not an enthusiastic supporter of the president -- to assume that his apparent determination and his "living up to both ideals" are truly genuine.

I suspect they are, and I am fairly confident that Obama has crossed the Rubicon, but I'll hold my applause. After all, there is still much that could go wrong.

Close to a deal

By Michael J.W. Stickings

If Tom Harkin is right, and the White House, Senate, and House reached a deal just days before Scott Brown won the special election in Massachusetts, giving the Republicans 41 seats instead of just 40, enough to block legislation with a filibuster, what the hell's the problem now?

Yes, the Democrats came "agonizingly close" to passing final reform legislation, but one extra Republican vote shouldn't prevent that from happening, not with other options on the table.

Democrats could seek to win over a Republican, like Maine moderates Olympia Snowe or Susan Collins, to put them over 60 votes in the Senate, including independents Bernie Sanders and Joe Lieberman, but Snowe, who voted for the Finance Committee bill that is a lot like the one she ended up rejecting, has shown no signs she's prepared to break ranks and vote against her party, which is stressing lock-step obstructionist unanimity.

And, again, there's a better option, as we keep saying over and over: The House could pass the Senate bill as is and improvements to the bill could then be made through reconciliation. Improvements could include adding a public option component, as in the House's bill, and/or expanding Medicare and Medicaid coverage. While doing so would lose the Democrats some votes in the Senate -- Even Bayh, Blanche Lincoln, Mary Landrieu, Ben Nelson, Lieberman, etc. -- they have a large enough majority to sustain a few defections. Brown's victory in Massachusetts did change the landscape somewhat, but it didn't change the reality that Congress remains in the hands of relatively huge Democratic majorities. And that should count for something -- enough for them to pass meaningful legislation without having to suck up to the obstructionist minority.

Cutting a deal with Lieberman

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Following up on Creature's post from earlier this evening...

The White House is apparently behind the move to scrap the Medicare buy-in, pushing Reid et al. to cut a deal with Lieberman. Specifically, and not surprisingly, it's Rahm Emanuel behind it.

It's a flip-flop for Lieberman, who was for the buy-in just a few months ago.

Honestly, how is it that one senator, and specifically a moral vacuum like Lieberman (who's all about himself, and getting what he wants, and basing his policy positions on ever-fluctuating whims), is able to hold the entire reform process hostage? How is it that he gets what he wants while the majority party is forced to give in and compromise again and again?

Is Tom Harkin right that the bill would be good enough without the public option and the Medicare buy-in? It could be, yes, and Democrats seem to have resigned themselves to giving Lieberman what he wants. At least, that's the takeaway from their public utterances.

Arlen Specter ought to be praised for saying this at a Democratic caucus meeting this evening: "Don't let these obstructionists win. I came to this caucus to be your 60th vote." The problem is, those 60 votes include a vote for Lieberman, an anti-Democrat who has been allowed to caucus with the Democrats despite his Republican inclinations.

Is there no way to win over Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins while giving Lieberman the boot he deserves?

For more on Lieberman's threat to reform, see Jonathan Chait, who is extremely critical of Lieberman and yet:

I don't think that health care reform is in peril. If Harry Reid decided to submit to Lieberman's demands, the health care bill would basically revert to what the Senate Finance Committee produced. That's still a major piece of legislation. Expectations among liberals have risen since then, so the come-down is understandable. But this isn't the end of reform.

No, perhaps not, but it's a tough pill to swallow, not least when you have 58 votes (60 minus Lieberman and Nelson) and when you've already given in and given up a lot already.

Here's American democracy at work, the sausage-making of the legislative process. It's ugly, and it's stupidly unfair, and, ultimately, it's the American people who get screwed.

In this case, all because of Joe Lieberman and his enablers, including those in the Obama White House.

Long live the public option!

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Sen. Tom Harkin: "We will have a bill on the president's desk before Christmas, a health-reform bill. It will have a lot of good stuff in it. It will have a lot of prevention and wellness programs in there that I've been fighting for. And it will have a public option... The question of if it doesn't isn't even an option."

Plus, Republicans won't be involved in putting a bill together: "This will be a proposal by the Democrats to bring a bill on the floor. And that's what I have said before, that the people of this country... pretty overwhelmingly elected Barack Obama last fall and to make changes. The people of this country overwhelmingly elected Democrats to the House and Senate... We should be proposing the changes to be made."

**********

Sen. Harry Reid: "We are going to have a public option before this bill goes to the president's desk... believe the public option is so vitally important to create a level playing field and prevent the insurance companies from taking advantage of us."

The two comments sound very much the same, suggesting that both Harkin and Reid were uttering talking points. Still, this is a very promising development. As many of us have been saying for a long time, Republicans had their chance. Obama reached to them, as did Senate Democrats. And how did they respond? With obstructionism or outright opposition, because they have no interest in reform and are trying to block it no matter what. And so, of course, it makes sense for Democrats now to go it alone, with or without the few remaining Republican centrists.

It sounds to me, though, like there is now a firm commitment to including a public option in whatever bill goes to the floor. There's really no way Democrats can back away from it now -- their own leader, Reid, has committed to it. But will the bill that ultimately emerges from Congress include a public option? Well, that's the key question. And it's still not clear what the answer is. I certainly hope Harkin is right.

The public option has stalled. So what now?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Sen. Tom Harkin thinks he has the votes to pass a health-care reform package that includes a so-called "public option," and he may very well be right -- it's possible, if (and it's a huge if) Democrats pull together to break an expected Republican filibuster) -- but, as of right now, the public option has stalled in the Senate Finance Committee, which, despite a Democratic majority voted today against two separate proposals put forward by Sens. Chuck Schumer and Jay Rockefeller. The problem is not so much that the Republicans all voted against them (including Schumer's compromise), it's that so many Democrats did, including Committee Chairman Max Baucus, who delusionally continues to push for a bipartisan package (without a public option) even with almost all Republicans clearly opposed to any and all compromise. (As Steve Benen notes, the Republican arguments against the public option were predictably stupid.)

We have long known that the Republicans are against meaningful health-care reform. What is so annoying now, though, is that the main obstacle is Democratic opposition in the Senate, from Baucus and Kent Conrad and so on. It is a small bloc of centrists, but it is a bloc that could side with the GOP on a filibuster (in refusing to break it, even against the wishes of an overwhelming majority of fellow Democrats).

So what now?

Well, Democrats could, and should, still push for the inclusion of a robust public option in any reform package. All it not lost yet.

And yet, as many health-care experts have pointed out, quite persuasively, you may not need a public option to achieve some of key goals of reform. And there is one country, as TNR's Jonathan Cohn writes, that is a model of how to do it: The Netherlands:

Liberals, understandably, are in agony. But they can take at least some comfort in looking overseas -- where one tiny country has managed to build a popular and successful universal health care program based entirely on private insurance. That country is the Netherlands, which several years ago overhauled its health care system and achieved most of the goals the liberal reform movement holds dear: near-universal coverage, affordable insurance, and quality health care.

Under the new system, the Dutch government has required that everybody gets insurance; in return, it makes sure insurance is available to everybody, regardless of pre-existing medical conditions or income. Although the government finances long-term care through a public program, it has turned over the job of providing basic medical coverage exclusively to private insurers, including some for-profit companies. Surveys show that the Dutch are happier with their health care than are Americans -- or the people of any other developed country, for that matter.

The "catch," as Cohn notes, is that health care in the Netherlands, however private, "operates more or less like a public utility."

Read the whole piece. It's an interesting model, and a viable alternative, though perhaps unworkable in the U.S., given the general reluctance to reform industry as vigorously as would be required. Still, with the public option in trouble, and with the distinct possibility that whatever reform package is passed will not include it, it may be time to start looking for next-best approaches, if we haven't already, that would, at the very least, be steps in the right direction and that could, eventually, lead to the sort of universal public system many of us desire.