Jon Chait Versus The Stupid Politico

Seems I'm not the only person with a problem with Mike Allen's crew as Jon Chait patiently does Allen's job for him, explaining Kent Conrad's logic on reconciliation succinctly because apparently Mike Allen isn't capable or willing to do it himself.

Perhaps suspecting that further explanation was required, Conrad proceeded to write a Washington Post op-ed laying out the distinction one more time:

Reconciliation is not being considered for passing comprehensive health-care reform. Major health-care reform legislation passed the Senate without reconciliation on Christmas Eve. If the House now passes that legislation, it can go immediately to President Obama's desk to be signed into law. What the president and others have suggested is that, after the House acts, reconciliation could then be used to pass a much smaller "fixer" bill to allow for modifications to the comprehensive bill that will have passed under regular order.

When I read the op-ed, I figured it had to be totally redundant. What sentient being who's following this closely could not understand it by now? I give you Politico's Mike Allen, writing Saturday:

When Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) made this confusing argument last week on “Face the Nation,” we weren’t sure he was being deliberately disingenuous. It was, in fact, spin. Now, he’s made the same case in a similarly obtuse WashPost op-ed, “Reconciliation is not an option for health-care reform.” Don’t misread it: It’s an Alice-in-Wonderland argument FOR the use of reconciliation as part of the recipe for getting comprehensive health reform to the president’s desk

Confusing? Obtuse? Does Conrad need to stop by Politico's offices with a picture book and some finger puppets? I understand perfectly well how intelligent people who don't follow this debate closely might not catch on to the distinction. But this is what Mike Allen does all day -- and, as I understand it, much of the night and the wee hours of the morning as well. How can anybody still not understand this? I'm at a loss here. Look, there's an endless list of topics I don't understand at all. I went through an entire semester of pre-Calculus in high school and was never able to understand what a function is. I still don't. It's a complicated subject and I was a lazy student. But this reconciliation distinction is easy, and Mike Allen is (legendarily) not lazy. So, what the hell is going on here?

I'm gonna go with "Mike Allen's trying to sink health care reform by being dense on purpose."  If you haven't noticed, there's a distinct reason why 55% of Americans want to start completely over on health care, because quite a few Americans believe that the Health Care Reform bills contain either costs or items that simply don't exist.

Like a lot of Villagers have discovered, selling this plan requires them to explain the plan fairly, and it's much easier to simply attack it or mislead about it.  It also opens up the Villagers to the Dirty F'ckin Hippie charge, which none of them are willing to be stuck with.  Gotta be "fair and balanced" after all.