February 18, 2010 08:29 PM UTC

Romanoff Would Have Killed the Senate Healthcare Bill - He Said It

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• by: BICora

Caroman, MADCO, and others are right.

My until now undecided neighbor is now for Bennet. (and she caucuses with all her friends)  

Caroman said that he thought Romanoff implied it at the HD37 meeting, MADCO said Romanoff implied it elswhere, I think he implied it a suburban clubhouse party. Campaign staff have denied it to me.  But Tuesday night he said it.

Caroman posted after the debate that maybe Romanoff said it. RSB acknowledged that AR talks fast and it was hard to transcribe everything.

But AR was on Channel 4 News this morning whining about Bennet campaining with his biggest endorsement, as he reeled off his own lesser endorsements (which is it- endorsements don’t matter and elected officials should stay out of it, or they do matter and it’s a good thing other elected D’s speak up?).

And News 4 said they have 12 minutes of the debate up on their website.

http://cbs4denver.com/campaign…

There are no time marks, it’s hard to scroll, but just past the halfway point, talking about the Senate healthcare bill,  Romanoff says it would have “only taken one Senator” to stand up to the special deals before the vote (which Bennet did) and then he says “I wouldn’t have voted for …”

Senate healthcare bill dies.

DeMint and the R’s have their “Obama waterloo.”

The Senate gets to start over, which if the lesson of the recent “start overs” on healthcare are useful, would have meant 15 or 20 or 40 years or more. Because then Scott Brown wins, Dorgan and Bayh announce they’re out. Other D seats are at risk, House and Senate. And so on.

Instead, Bennet is one of 60 to vote yes and we have a Senate bill. And now with Bennet’s leadership we have a chance to get healthcare reform through reconciliation.  

I know, I know, because I’ve heard Andrew and his supporters say it too,  that AR supporters say that if only AR was our Senator, then we would have had a bill that seriously considered single payer, would have kept the public option and not gotten all those “special deals” and still got the thing passed.

Yesterday I called it the “faerie dust” argument.  It’s worse than that because at least the faerie dust argument is rapidly seen as insane or at least foolish.

Voyageur called it making the perfect the enemy of the good which is both too kind and much more accurate.

Romanoff and his supporters sound like petulant children.

I should have had the appointment, mine mine mine

If I had been appointed, I would have done it better

If we didn’t get a public option, it’s Bennet’s fault

It’s all his fault

My neighbor has been defending Andrew – primaries are good, challenge is good, Andrew is good – and was undecided until I showed her this this morning.  Now she thinks he’s either idealistically unrealistic (she’s too kind to call it the faerie dust argument) or he’s just not ready for this kind of office.  

She predicted that Andrew would make the comparison to how we do it in Colorado, and how under his House leadership he would never have allowed it.  (I think she’s right but I wasn’t there Tuesday and haven’t heard him say exactly that before.) But she pointed out that the US Senate doesn’t work like the Colorado legislature and that he was in a leadership position because of term limits and would have been a jr nobody in the Senate.

He said it.

Update: March 2 2010

I’ve been waiting for better video to be posted. I’m right and the quote is accurate.  Yes, AR went on to describe it as a “false choice”, but that’s not the point. The point is he said he would not have voted for the Senate Bill as it was.