If Democrats don’t pass health care reform, the GOP leads in generic ballots by 43%-38%. If Democrats do pass health care reform, GOP leads in generic ballots by 43%-40%.
The poll has generated a pretty vigorous response online.* One way to interpret these results is: It makes no difference, Democrats are hosed. Another way to interpret these poll results is: It makes no difference, Democrats are hosed — so why not just pass health care reform anyway?
Megan took issue with the latter interpretation:
I am similarly underwhelmed by the notion that once we’ve passed
the bill, it will somehow be easier to sell “what’s in it.” There is
lots of information about what is in the House and Senate bills, but
the public has clearly not consumed that information. Why are they
going to magically become more wonkish after it passes?I find
it easier to make the counterargument–that in districts where the
thing polls moderately well, it’s easier to make up pleasant
characteristics for a bill that never passed, and then complain that
Republican obstructionism prevented us from realizing the dream.
Whatever emerged from a Senate + reconciliation strategy will almost
certainly be uglier than either the House or the Senate bills on their
own.
I agree with Megan that I don’t see this bill getting much more popular
if it passes. We might see a little spike among moderates and liberals
who are relieved to have salvaged something from the slog, but
the president’s signature is unlikely to transform the bill’s
marketability. Megan’s conclusion is: Don’t pass the damn bill. My
conclusion would be: Pass the damn bill right away.
Americans have short memories, cable news has a hyperactive metabolism
and news stories have the half-life of a mayfly. If you’re going to pass the damn bill without confidence of its popularity, you need to pass it with time to create months of A1 news that has nothing to do
with health care reform. If you’re going
to pass a bill that (a) has the potential to encourage some deep blue
donors to donate money to Senate and House campaigns, (b) doesn’t move
national polls dramatically, and (c) isn’t terribly popular to begin
with, it makes sense to make health care reform a priority rather than
a back-burner issue. By early summer the Obama team wants the news to be all about
jobs for Main Street and fixes for Wall Street — a wave of populism
that carries into autumn when the state-by-state polls start to harden.
In other words, the Rahm Emanuel strategy of picking up health care reform later this year after the jobs and the bank regulations are passed strikes me as a great way to either alienate the base or remind voters about that trillion-dollar bill they don’t understand (or know they hate) just as they’re about to go to the polls. It just doesn’t make sense to me.
*Truly I can’t remember the last time so much was said about a poll that said so little, but here I go anyway….
