Believe it or not, I do get it (I can't speak for Coakley). I just make different trade-off weightings than you do.
You assert that if hc+stupak had been voted down then the only alternative for the House would have been to vote on whatever the Senate produced. But they can't vote on that - they only vote on bills brought up from the House itself. Sometimes you just copy the Senate bill and intro that, it gets voted on, the conference committee is a no-op and it's passed. And sometimes you vote on something that differs from the Senate bill and the differences get worked out in conference and then there's a (usually pro-forma) re-vote on the compromise.
Since the House has to produce its own version of the bill somehow either it could have carbon-copied the Senate bill (not bloody likely) or gone back and re-drafted a bill without abortion restrictions. Assuming nobody changes his vote you're right, the house can't produce its own bill. Another assumption is that Representatives would be persuaded to change their votes on abortion restrictions when it became clear that a bill with such restrictions wouldn't get out of the House. Reps don't like being dictated to by the Senate and - given the political cover of being able to say that they'd voted for it once - they could then have worked out a compromise that included no restrictions or less onerous ones.
My calculus is that given the choice of "eat Senate crow" or "come up with a bill that doesn't add new restrictions on abortion" the House would've chosen the latter option. I don't think my calculus is any less of a political realist view than yours and I'm sort of annoyed that you keep insisting I don't get it.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
momijizukamori
Re: I like Capuano but
Date: 2009-12-10 15:06 (UTC)You assert that if hc+stupak had been voted down then the only alternative for the House would have been to vote on whatever the Senate produced. But they can't vote on that - they only vote on bills brought up from the House itself. Sometimes you just copy the Senate bill and intro that, it gets voted on, the conference committee is a no-op and it's passed. And sometimes you vote on something that differs from the Senate bill and the differences get worked out in conference and then there's a (usually pro-forma) re-vote on the compromise.
Since the House has to produce its own version of the bill somehow either it could have carbon-copied the Senate bill (not bloody likely) or gone back and re-drafted a bill without abortion restrictions. Assuming nobody changes his vote you're right, the house can't produce its own bill. Another assumption is that Representatives would be persuaded to change their votes on abortion restrictions when it became clear that a bill with such restrictions wouldn't get out of the House. Reps don't like being dictated to by the Senate and - given the political cover of being able to say that they'd voted for it once - they could then have worked out a compromise that included no restrictions or less onerous ones.
My calculus is that given the choice of "eat Senate crow" or "come up with a bill that doesn't add new restrictions on abortion" the House would've chosen the latter option. I don't think my calculus is any less of a political realist view than yours and I'm sort of annoyed that you keep insisting I don't get it.