Kill the bill = swatting a fly on your arm with a chainsaw

Jane Hamsher at firedoglake is advocating killing the senate health care bill because it will bring about the end of the western world and force you to remove your uterus and send it to Nebraska. Or some such.

Jon Walker, also at FDL, comes to their defense:

What I have heard from people like Howard Dean, Markos Moulitsas, Keith Olbermann, Jane Hamsher, etc… is that they simply want to kill the current version of the Senate bill. None of them, to my knowledge, have advocated ending all efforts to pass a health care reform bill. I believe each and every one of them have advocated for simply passing a different bill through different means.

He goes on to argue that there are at least 4 scenarios whereby progressives can get a better bill out of the Senate using reconciliation.

Here's the problem: it might not work. In fact, it probably won't. Most progressives discovered the term "reconciliation" over the summer and now use it as a mantra. Kind of like "Beetlejuice". Say "reconciliation" 3 times and single payer appears.

Let me make two points:
1) The current Senate HCR bill is not bad. It's not perfect, in fact it's not even great. But it's good and makes a great framework to hang other legislation on in years to come. Without it though, health care is dead in my lifetime. The nation won't go through the last 6 months again as a progressive do-over. Not happening. Period.

2) There is a long way to go. anyone who thinks the Senate bill won't be changed during the conference with the House to merge the bills is short-sighted or nuts. The House bill is a more progressive bill and the Senate bill is going to go in that direction. And there's going to be a fight over it. save your bullets for that one.

As the much-smarter-than-me Nate Silver lays out, in exhaustive fashion, there are huge problems with the thought process of those who think reconciliation is a magic bullet.

The failure to use reconciliation does not reveal any lack of courage on behalf of Harry Reid or the White House. It is, rather, a reflection of reality. The more unadorned, straightforward versions of reconciliation might not work and would probably result in objectively worse policy than the bill that the Senate is considering now. The more exotic versions might or might not result in better policy, but almost certainly wouldn't work.

None of this is to say that the reconciliation strategies are impossible. They might work. But the hurdles are much more significant than what Jon has implied, and reconciliation might also "work" but produce a worse, perhaps much worse, policy outcome. Even if one were willing to ignore the political fallout, it would be a fairly poor strategy. And when the consequences for the Democrats' electoral fortunes are taken into account -- as well as their compromised ability to pass policies like a jobs bill and financial reform next year -- it seems like a very poor risk.