{"id":2540,"date":"2010-01-12T21:55:06","date_gmt":"2010-01-12T21:55:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=2540"},"modified":"2010-01-12T21:55:06","modified_gmt":"2010-01-12T21:55:06","slug":"it_aint_over_ye","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=2540","title":{"rendered":"It Ain’t Over Yet"},"content":{"rendered":"

The health care bill continues its slow march towards final passage as House and Senate Democrats work on negotiating a compromise bill. But even now, with the finish line so tantalizingly close, a special election in Massachusetts (of all places) could throw a monkey wrench in the whole works. Next Tuesday, Massachusetts voters will elect a senator to fill Edward Kennedy’s seat. Of course, Massachusetts is as blue as a naked Na’vi taking a quick dip in Lake Superior, but the political climate is such that even Massachusetts Democratic candidate Martha Coakley is facing a tough crowd. Polls are all over the place<\/a> and it’s conceivable that the Republican candidate could win, thus taking away the Democrats’ filibuster-proof majority. <\/p>\n

In such a scenario, the House could still pass the Senate version of the bill and be done with the process. But that solution is far from ideal. The Senate bill could stand a lot of improving<\/a> and that can only happen if the House and Senate negotiate. <\/p>\n

This was never going to be easy. I’m reasonably confident Coakley will win, but much is at stake and it would be a horrible shame if Kennedy’s successor killed his dream of making health care more accessible and affordable.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The health care bill continues its slow march towards final passage as House and Senate Democrats work on negotiating a compromise bill. But even now, with the finish line so tantalizingly close, a special election in Massachusetts (of all places) could throw a monkey wrench in the whole works. Next Tuesday, Massachusetts voters will elect […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-1-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Iwau-EY","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2540\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}