The Pulse | The politics of health care
Column by Chris Graham
Health-care reform opponents speak as if it’s a given that the passage of reform including a public option and new mandates for private insurers will be an act of political suicide by Democrats.
Take comments from Bill Wilson, the president of the advocacy group Americans for Limited Government, released today on the topic of the U.S. Senate vote to move forward with debate on a reform bill under consideration in the senior chamber of Congress.
The vote was “completely out of step with public sentiment about the legislation,” said Wilson, citing a poll conducted by the right-leaning pollster Rasmussen Reports that suggests that 56 percent of likely voters now oppose the legislation.
“And yet the Senate is moving rapidly to enact this legislation in direct defiance of the American people’s express wishes. They are defying representative government, raising the question: If not the people, who do they represent?” Wilson said, offering the veiled threat that Democrats sitting on the political fence are no doubt getting loud and clear.
Vote for reform at your own political peril, is the threat.
Another poll from Public Policy Polling offers another form of veiled threat: Fail to vote for reform at your own peril.
“Clearly Democrats need to pass a health-care bill if they want to do well at the polls next year,” said Dean Debnam, president of Public Policy Polling, which is registering a 46 percent-to-41 percent split in favor of Democrats on its generic national congressional ballot with the hypothetical that Democrats have been successful in getting a reform bill passed and signed into law.
The split if the reform fails – a 40-40 dead heat.
The movers are independents, who go from being +7 for Dems on generic ballots to +7 for Republicans in the early polling on 2010 if reform with a public option is passed and signed into law; and Democratic voters, whose intensity for Democratic candidates increases nine points with the passage of reform with a public option.
Another lesson for congressional Democrats comes from the history books. Remember 1993?
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Will Democratic intensity increase with the passage of a bill, or decline if their wishes aren’t part of the bill? I’ve seen an awful lot of complaining on the Democratic side about Saturday’s vote, and it’s likely abortion, or public option or fines will leave many unhappy. Whatever the final outcome of the bill or those important issues.
In the end, I think – and this is just me thinking out loud, which is worth whatever it’s worth – that Democratic intensity increases with passage. As long as there is something to claim victory on, that’s at the least an improvement on 1993-1994, in the eyes of most Democrats.
I think that if the Dems pass a “public option” they will claim victory. It appears that would be spell trouble for the 49 or so Dem. Congressman whose districts voted for McCain in 2008 as well as several Dem. Senators in more conservative states like our own Sen. Webb. Last year when Virginia was carried by President Obama, Gov. Kaine declared an end to a “red” Old Dominion and the birth of a “New Dominion”. I don’t think that was the case, it takes years or even generations for any political area as populous as Virginia to change on such a large scale. The fact is a lot of people voted for President Obama that had never voted before and may not vote again, it was the “Rock Star’ effect, it made history not to mention Presidents Bush’s low approval rate.
The new Obama voters may not vote again – if what they voted for doesn’t make its way into public policy. That’s the lesson of Virginia in ’09 to me. One way to look at it, of course, would be as a reverse of the “Obama mandate.” Another would be to look at who among the new ’08 voters didn’t show up at the polls in ’09. Creigh Deeds ran away from Obama as much as he ran against Bob McDonnell. He lost to both.
The problem Democrats will have in 2010 and 2012 is the same problem Republicans have had for several years. You have a center that leads the policy discussions and a wing that wants action. The trick is to balance action with sensible centrist policy. The reason the pendulum swings back and forth every few years is eventually the wing takes over, and the voters punish the party for its overreaching.
I don’t think we’re there yet with Democrats on the national scene. One reason is Republicans are still deluding themselves into thinking that the reason they’d been losing elections in recent years is because they weren’t conservative enough, when in actuality it was that they were appealing too much to their wings.
The blather about Obama and Democrats trying to make the country “socialist” is further evidence that those in charge of the GOP don’t get it.
The short term is still Democrat-friendly, at least for 2010 and 2012, unless GOP leaders come to their senses and push back against their wing. I don’t see that happening given the overconfidence that I sense out of the party based on the elections in New Jersey and Virginia.
I don’t know anything about New Jersey politics, but I know Virginia, and Virginia didn’t vote for Bob McDonnell because he sold voters on a paleoconservative vision of government management. He won because he made himself to be the GOP’s answer to Mark Warner. More Republicans should follow the model of McDonnell in ’09, but that’s just me thinking out loud.
Didn’t McDonnell just reclaim the GOP mantle of fiscal common sense that Republicans are known for nationally?
Is that the same fiscal common sense that the GOP was so well-known for nationally from 2001-2009? Or is there some other fiscal common sense that you’re referring to?
nah, pre-2001. The fiscal common sense that balanced the budget during the Clinton era. Clinton couldn’t have done it without Republicans (and Bill Gates).
The Republicans in the 1990s were too focused on reversing the results of the two Clinton elections by usurping the Constitution to be concerned about the budget or anything else of substance.
Oh, wait, they’re back at it again.
This pre-2001 you’re talking about – you must mean way pre-2001. Not Reagan-Bush. Nixon could balance a budget. Not that I’d be bragging on Nixon, given how that ended.
Eisenhower. That’s what you have to be talking about.
(My mom was born the first year of his first term. So that’s been a few years ago.)