this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2023
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How many seats do democrats need to make a singlepayer option without Republican help?
Supermajority in both Senate and House?
Genuine question, I'm not overly familiar with the nitpicks.
Majority in House, supermajority of 60 in the Senate, practically speaking.
PROBLEM:
Not all Democrats are onboard with universal healthcare. Hence the fiasco in 2009.
It takes a lot of effort and nuance to pass a good idea. It only takes one shithead (republican) flinging poop to muddy the waters, so it's incredibly hard to pass good legislation.
You need like 65 Democrats to even have a chance, but that will be very hard since R voters are dumb as bricks and if Trump didn't wake them up to their stupidity, nothing will.
Personally I disagree, I think the Liebercrats have mostly died off, the tenor of the debate within the modern democratic party has almost completely become "just a public option or complete wipeout of private medicine?"
Personally I think the best first step is just removing the age floor on Medicare. You're eligible soon as ya come out the womb. The only other change you'd need to make immediately is mandating that doctors accept it if they want to remain licensed to practice.
Only takes one. Shit, until recently we had Sinema, and we still have Manchin.
Yes it only takes one, thing is though, it's only a couple now, and the taboo against even questioning the filibuster has been broken by enough senators that a solid enough majority with a big enough agenda could be pressured into breaking the seal and launching a policy blitz.
Bare minimum 60 in the Senate and 218 in the house, a long with a president that supports it. But given that many Democrats take money from health insurance companies and have a vested interest in stopping universal healthcare, you'd probably need a supermajority (2/3) in both houses to pass it, as some Dems will inevitably vote against it.
They had it for about 50 days in 2009.
That's when we got the ACA.
Which is Romneycare.
They had a supermajority and they still wouldn't do anything but pass a Republican bill.
I don't think the Democratic party actually had a supermajority. January of 2009 there were 57 dem senators plus Bernie and Lieberman (who refused to vote for single payer); however, Al Franken wasn't sworn in until July because he barely won the election and Republicans forced a recount, leaving that Senate seat empty. Ted Kennedy was dying and stopped showing up in March and later died, Scott Brown (a Republican) won that seat in a special election. Kennedy did have a replacement who voted in favor of ACA right before Brown won his election.
I don't believe there was ever a time where dems actually had 60 votes in the Senate during 2009 except the pretty short period where they did manage to pass the ACA with exactly 60 votes that included Bernie, Lieberman, Franken, and Kennedy's temporary replacement. But remember that Franken wasn't there until July and Scott Brown got elected right after ACA passed the Senate in December 2009. So by the time the ACA made it to the House vote it was March 2010 and if the House Dems didn't pass it as it was, the Republicans would be able to block it in the Senate.
I'm not so sure that Dems would have done more if they had a proper supermajority, probably not
Kennedy's temp replacement was installed in November 2009, so between then and January (when Brown took office) they had the supermajority and the Senate passed the ACA.
It was a broken bill that was going to be cleaned up in reconciliation with a different House bill. But when Brown took office the House was forced to pass the Senate version verbatim so the final bill wouldn't have to go back to the Senate prior to the President's signature.
I don't know, but first they need a leader who's actually interested in singlepayer in the first place.
Biden has consistently shown himself willing to change his position on almost any matter as long as his colleagues and constituents show it too.
2008 had a lot regular Democrats spooked about big bad single payer. With younger representatives he'd definitely be on board when the will starts showing.
Obama could have gotten it done if Dems had the willpower in that short window. They'll get another chance at some point. Will they jump on it next time? I'm not sure. Some of them are taking that same billionaire money.
Nope, even conservativer Dems than the one we wrangle over today refused to get on board with the filibuster proof majority so long as the public option was still included