Should Democrats be Celebrating?

Welcome to Politics Bites, where every afternoon at It's A Free Country we bring you the unmissable quotes from political conversations on WNYC. On today's Brian Lehrer Show, William Saletan, national correspondent for Slate, argued that despite the midterm election results, Democrats still won the battle of 2010.

Since election day, headline after headline has trumpeted the "shellacking" of Democrats and the resurgence of the Republican party. But if you ask William Saletan, that narrative is all wrong.

In a recent article, Saletan argues that 2010 was a victory for President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and the rest of the embattled Democratic party. You just have to look at the past successes, not the fresh wounds.

You do all this legislating in between elections, a lot of gamesmanship designed to hurt the other guys. I think this is an upside-down way of looking at what politics is about. It should be about how you use the seats you won in the last election to enact your agenda, what you believe in, and what you told people when you got elected.

Tallying the scorecard by these criteria, rather than political wins, Saletan said the Democrats were victorious. Passing the mammoth health care overhaul bill was such a landmark accomplishment that the political price was well worth paying, he said.

I'm sure there are things that Democrats could have done differently to keep their seats. But let's suppose it's true that passing the bill was a political overreach, in the sense that it would motivate conservatives. If that was going to happen, then my sense is that Democrats did the right thing by going through with the bill.

But Saletan was quick to offer an explanation for why this Congress and the Obama administration focused their attention the way they did. He says they rightly seized an opportunity that may never come again.

They did what they could do. They passed the stimulus bill. It's just that the government could do more to affect healthcare than it could to affect the job situation. Given how much money was spent on jobs and that it still didn't quite get the job done, I think there's a limit to what can be done by government to affect an economic cycle. But health care was something they could actually address through passing legislation...Yes there are problems with the bill and there will be modifications to it, but we wouldn't even be able to make these modifications and have a better health care system if they didn't pass this bill. And they did that.

Of course, not everyone agrees with Saletan's assessment of the health care legislation. A caller named Jack pointed out that what might have been a legislative victory for a political party isn't necessarily beneficial to—or desired by—Americans.

You're making a serious mistake if you believe the American people voted for them for that. The American people never dreamed, even though they said it in their platform, that the Democrats would do what they've done. It is true they succeeded, but they succeeded against the will of Americans.

Listen to the entire conversation on The Brian Lehrer Show.