Dems guess wrong on health care
By: Carrie Budoff Brown
September 22, 2010 10:31 PM EDT
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Rarely have so many political strategists been so wrong about something so big.
But when it comes to the health care bill, everyone from former President Bill Clinton on down whiffed on some of the more significant predictions.
Democrats would run aggressively on the legislation? Nope. Voters would forget about the sausage-making aspects of the legislative process? Doesn’t seem that way, as the process contributed to the sense that the bill was deeply flawed.
And Clinton’s own promise to jittery Democrats that their poll numbers would skyrocket after the bill finally passed also didn’t pan out, as the party is fighting for its life in the midterms.
At the six-month mark, the law remains a riddle for political analysts, lawmakers and the White House. Here’s a look at some of the predictions that have proved off the mark.
“I’m telling you, I don’t care how low they drive support for this with misinformation. The minute the president signs the health care reform bill, approval will go up, because Americans are inherently optimistic.” — Bill Clinton at the Netroots Nation convention in August 2009.
When Clinton spoke, Democratic lawmakers listened.
And why shouldn’t they? Clinton’s a party elder who battled back from his own defeat over health care reform, a Republican takeover of Congress and impeachment.
His sunny, longer-term outlook came at a time when Democrats were increasingly anxious about the protracted negotiations on Capitol Hill, the lack of focus on the economy and the mounting backlash from voters, as evidenced by the raucous town halls during the same month Clinton spoke.
A week before final passage, Democratic pollsters Douglas Schoen and Pat Caddell, who had worked for Clinton, pierced the optimism. They wrote a Washington Post op-ed warning the party had deluded itself into thinking that Americans wanted the bill. And as a result, they wrote, Democrats ran the risk of “unmitigated disaster” in November.
The Washington establishment responded in kind. Obama pollster Joel Benenson shot back that Schoen and Caddell were peddling “Republican myths.” The American Enterprise Institute’s Norm Ornstein and the Brookings Institution’s Thomas Mann penned a response column that started out by describing Schoen and Caddell as “disgruntled (if not former) Democrats.”
Nobody knows whether Democrats would be doing any better if they abandoned the health care push. They would have owned the issue regardless, given how long they had spent on it.
But six months later, Schoen and Caddell were more accurate in their predictions than their former boss: Public attitudes towards the legislation remain as negative and divided as when Obama signed it into law.
“I was wrong,” Clinton acknowledged Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
“If and when this is passed, Democrats will run aggressively on this.” — White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer in The New York Times on March 15, 2010.
Obama told Democrats repeatedly that they would be proud to campaign on legislation as historic as comprehensive health care reform, something that had eluded generations of lawmakers and presidents.
Top Democratic strategists and administration officials, dispatched by the White House, made the case, too. White House deputy chief of staff Jim Messina told Senate Democrats during a private caucus meeting in November about the electoral ramifications of health reform that it would be important to achieve parity with the opposition on the airwaves and that they needed to “stand for something, go for it and always play offense.”
The campaign season has played out quite differently.
A handful of Democrats are using TV ads to tout their “no” votes, but none are doing the same to highlight their support. Some Senate Democrats, including Barbara Boxer of California and Michael Bennet of Colorado, ignore the law altogether in the health care section of their campaign websites. They don't take credit for helping pass the Affordable Care Act.
As for parity in the ad wars, POLITICO reported Wednesday that Democrats are fuming over the lack of financial support they’re receiving after taking a series of tough votes, including from pro-health reform groups. Pro-Republican third-party organizations have paid for a total of $23.6 million worth of ads, while Democratic-aligned groups have spent just $4.8 million on TV.
Now, the White House expectation for Democratic candidates falls far short of aggressive.
“Obviously, they’ll do what they think and what they believe is best in terms of what they want to talk about in their districts,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said this week.
“When it comes to health care and insurance, once reform passes, the tangible benefits Americans will realize will trump the fear-mongering rhetoric opponents are stoking today.” — Obama pollster Joel Benenson in a Washington Post op-ed on March 13, 2010.
Democrats pushed as many benefits as they could to the front of the implementation timetable, hoping enough Americans would get a taste of reform and public opinion would begin to turn around before the elections.
But some of the more popular changes, including allowing young people to stay on their parents’ insurance until age 26 are going into effect only this week. Back in March, the mid-September target seemed like plenty of time to make a difference before the election. But with a political environment that has turned so negative for Democrats, some analysts say the positive news won’t matter in the short term.
Not even a wave of $250 checks for more than 1 million senior citizens on Medicare prescription drugs has boosted attitudes and allayed fears among this particularly skeptical demographic.
“I don’t think that is a game changer,” said Jim Firman, president and chief executive officer of the National Council on Aging, of the rebate checks. “(There is) more concern about the overall integrity and solvency of Medicare and how their access to physicians will be protected.”
“The reconciliation process is entirely appropriate for amending the Senate-passed bill; in any case, the public will judge the Democrats on the basis of the results, not the inside-baseball process.” — Ornstein and Mann in The New Republic on March 15, 2010
The “inside-baseball process” did matter because it became the dominant narrative of the debate.
Democrats argued that voters wouldn’t care about how the bill became law, only that Congress delivered on its promise. But with trust in government at historic lows, things that were normal on Capitol Hill — negotiating behind closed doors, cutting deals for votes — suddenly looked like an abuse of power to the average voter.
The ugly battle may well amount to a footnote years from now, but even a central figure in hatching the Democratic strategy says the party erred.
“The textbook in a civics class of how the institution should not act was the health care bill,” Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., told NBC News this month. “It was arrogant. Both parties were arrogant and selfish, in my view."
“Flip-flopping is dangerous in this business.” -- A senior Senate Democratic aide in POLITICO on March 3, 2010.
White House and congressional aides used this line as they whipped House and Senate Democrats for votes, trying to prevent defections as the bill came around for final passage. And labor unions pledged to take out Democrats who stayed in the “no” column.
But the threats were more bark than bite for those who flip-flopped. Sen. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas beat a labor-backed primary challenger, as did Rep. Stephen Lynch of Massachusetts. Rep. Michael Arcuri of New York faces a tough general election, but a recent Siena College poll showed him up by 8 points. And Rep. Daniel Lipinski of Illinois is viewed as a shoo-in for November.
“They are now in the unfortunate position of looking voters in the eye and pledging to take away their health care, reinstate the doughnut hole for seniors and restore pre-existing conditions for insurance companies.” — Eric Schultz, spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, in the Daily Caller on March 31, 2010.
Six months later, the repeal-and-replace platform remains a cornerstone of the House Republican agenda if the party wins back control of Congress.
Democrats still think this is a battle they can win, not simply because Obama can veto any measure weakening the law. They believe voters will not want to give up benefits once they go into effect, even if they dislike the overall law.
Still, rather than being viewed as a kooky notion, the repeal-and-replace battle cry resonates with the electorate: Polls show voters are divided on the question, with about as many people opposed to rolling back the law as those who favor doing so.
“The moment health care is signed into law, that is half-time. The next half is selling it to the American people.” -- Third Way vice president FOR policy Jim Kessler in POLITICO on Oct. 19, 2009.
Obama mentions the law during public remarks, often at Democratic fundraisers. But it’s usually just a few lines wedged between the economy and the financial regulatory overhaul. And it’s nothing like the full court press that political analysts predicted before the bill’s passage and White House officials hinted at.
The president shifted immediately to the economy, then to the Wall Street reform bill and the Gulf Coast oil spill. He’s done only a handful of events focused on health care reform in the last six months.
“I realized it wasn’t half time. The game was actually over,” Kessler said. “People just said, ‘I don’t want to listen to stories about this anymore. It took too long, I didn’t like the process and in the end, I might like the bill but just stop talking to me about it.’”
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