Dana Blankenhorn misinterprets history:
The problem here for Republicans is their own past success. President Clinton failed to get a health bill through in 1993 and Democrats were hammered the next year, especially their more conservative members. It took them over a decade to win back the majorities they had then.
This may make threats to wreck the careers of those voting “aye” less potent, with conservative Democrats figuring that if they can’t win they might as well stand for something.
The bottom line. If Democrats can’t agree on a proposal given their substantial majorities in both Houses of Congress, they face a generation’s exile in the political wilderness, no matter how many crazy pills some Republicans take.
Emphasis mine. If the last graf is true, then they’re damned either way, because if they ram through a bill that all the polls show is very unpopular, they’ll be hammered like they were in 1994 by angry voters. The key that Dems (and I think that the Blue Dogs) understand it is in the false causation implied in the highlighted statement. Yes, the Dems failed to pass health care in 1993 and yes, they got hammered in 1994. But one didn’t cause the other. What happened in 1994 was due to several things — “don’t ask, don’t tell” as one of the first things out of the box, the mishandling of health care, with Hillary (the most brilliant woman in the world) sent off to draft a big-government bill behind closed doors, passing the “assault weapons” ban, a failure to pass the promised “middle-class tax cuts.” Failing to pass the health-care monstrosity wasn’t the cause of them losing the Congress — it was the very attempt to pass it. Actually passing this bill will be disastrous.
Oh, and the fact that “conservative Democrats” lost seats disproportionately simply means that they were in marginal, unsafe districts. It certainly wasn’t because they failed to vote for a big-government bill. The Dems don’t have any good choices at this point, but passing a Dem-only bill will be Armageddon at the polls for them next year.
What polls show the public option to be unpopular?
Have you any links?
The most recent SurveyUSA poll shows significant support for a public option as an alternative to private health coverage.
It always depends on the wording of the polls, but all polls, including the one of likely voters (not just registered voters, or “adults”), show that ObamaCare is unpopular. As, now, is Obama (not a permalink). Those two things are probably not a coincidence at this point.
Public option polling is all over the place . . .
This link links to various polling:
http://clivecrook.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/08/polling_and_the_public_option.php
Even Rassmussen (43% for and 53% against) means it is “in play” since other polls (Survey USA for example) show support “for” the public option well in the 60s.
And since there is NOTHING that Obama, Reid and Pelosi can to to please the Right (except maybe resign) perhaps their only political hope is to tack Left and try and move those poll numbers.
I woudl fully support a public option provided it was required by Constitutional Amendment to balance its books each year, that is, take in from its subscribers no less than it pays out in benefits and overhead. Like the Post Office, or Amtrak, only without tax subsidies.
I can confidently predict it would last about ten years, tops. But in the meantime, it would serve to siphon off all kinds of idiots and clowns who want a free lunch, and then we’d know where to find them — their names, addresses, phone numbers.
Then we just need to pick out a nice big deserted island in the South Pacific…arrange for transport…perhaps (to be humanitarian) a decent supply of seeds and tools…an encyclopedia printed at the sixth-grade level…
So many problems would be solved!
And since there is NOTHING that Obama, Reid and Pelosi can to to please the Right (except maybe resign) perhaps their only political hope is to tack Left and try and move those poll numbers.
Well, good luck with that. I hope they do. If so, they (and you) will be as delusional as Mr. Blankenhorn.
Gee, I sure hope they go for it, Bill. As i said last November, the only thing I feared about Obama is that he might be too smart to self-destruct so spectacularly as to discreidt the modern Left for a full generation. He might have read the tea leaves, like Clinton, and moved a fortiori towards the center.
Fortunately, so far he shows no such insight nor intellectual flexibility. In retrospect, perhaps that’s not so surprising. Clinton came from a background in which the importance of actions over words was rammed home. Obama, by contrast, comes from the rarefied atmosphere of academia (even worse, the supremely rarefied air of Harvard and Chicago), where if you talk a good game, that’s all that counts. He seems a little clueless about the importance of actual actions, and that these things matter when you are governing.
So he is well on his way to a wonderful head-on crash with the brick wall of reality. I can only hope he takes your advice and steps on the gas.
And since there is NOTHING that Obama, Reid and Pelosi can to to please the Right (except maybe resign) perhaps their only political hope is to tack Left and try and move those poll numbers.
If he did resign he would be deemed as soft by the right. There is nothing the right hates most than soft rulers. Just notice how much they hate Carter. They would probably prefer Stalin to Carter.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20090831/pl_politico/26393
“Experts see double-digit Dem losses
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Delicious Digg Facebook Fark Newsvine Reddit StumbleUpon Technorati Twitter Yahoo! Bookmarks Print Featured Topics: Barack Obama Josh Kraushaar Josh Kraushaar – Mon Aug 31, 5:50 am ET
After an August recess marked by raucous town halls, troubling polling data and widespread anecdotal evidence of a volatile electorate, the small universe of political analysts who closely follow House races is predicting moderate to heavy Democratic losses in 2010.
Some of the most prominent and respected handicappers can now envision an election in which Democrats suffer double-digit losses in the House — not enough to provide the 40 seats necessary to return the GOP to power but enough to put them within striking distance.
Top political analyst Charlie Cook, in a special August 20 update to subscribers, wrote that “the situation this summer has slipped completely out of control for President Obama and congressional Democrats.”
“Many veteran congressional election watchers, including Democratic ones, report an eerie sense of déjà vu, with a consensus forming that the chances of Democratic losses going higher than 20 seats is just as good as the chances of Democratic losses going lower than 20 seats,” he wrote.
At the mid-August Netroots Nation convention, Nate Silver, a Democratic analyst whose uncannily accurate, stat-driven predictions have made his website FiveThirtyEight.com a must read among political junkies, predicted that Republicans will win between 20 and 50 seats next year. He further alarmed an audience of progressive activists by arguing that the GOP has between a 25 and 33 percent chance of winning back control of the House.
“A lot of Democratic freshmen and sophomores will be running in a much tougher environment than in 2006 and 2008 and some will adapt to it, but a lot of others will inevitably freak out and end up losing,” Silver told POLITICO. “Complacency is another factor: We have volunteers who worked really hard in 2006 and in 2008 for Obama but it’s less compelling [for them] to preserve the majority.”
Historic trends point to Republican House gains in the midterm election, particularly after facing two brutal election cycles where the party lost seats in every region and even in some of the most conservative states in the nation. Over the last five decades, the party out of power has picked up seats in 10 of the 12 midterm elections.
Turnout levels may also work in the GOP’s favor: House Democrats who narrowly won election in 2008 on the strength of high turnout among African-Americans and young voters probably won’t be able to count on that same level of enthusiasm next year in a nonpresidential election.
The national political environment, of course, could look significantly different next year. It wasn’t until the final month before the 1994 GOP landslide that political analyst Stuart Rothenberg, editor and publisher of The Rothenberg Political Report, anticipated GOP gains large enough to win back control of the House.
This year, Rothenberg cautioned that despite signs of a Republican resurgence, there are many factors working against huge numbers of GOP pickups. If Democrats are able to pass a health care bill without the controversial public option, the party could get credit for passing legislation without jeopardizing their most vulnerable members, he noted. And if the economy perks up in the third quarter of next year, Rothenberg argued, all bets are off.
“To have another wholesale sea change bigger than last year’s and almost as big as the two years combined is asking a lot. It’s not impossible, but you have to think that’s quite a challenge for the Republicans,” said Rothenberg. “If [House Republicans] won 12 to 15 seats, … they should be very happy about that. Could I see them winning more than that? If there are gale force winds, I could see them winning 20 to 25, … but 40 seats is a really big number.”
Cook Political Report House analyst David Wasserman, who expects Republicans to pick up between nine and 26 seats, said that even if the national environment approximates the 1994 atmosphere, there are significant structural differences about the political landscape that will limit Republican gains.
Back in 1994, Democrats had held the majority for 42 years. Many veteran members, predominantly from conservative districts, decided to retire after sensing the changing political winds. Of the 31 open seats they created, Republicans picked up 23 of them — about 40 percent of the GOP’s total pickups that year.
Only seven House Democrats to date have announced they’re not running for reelection — with all but three of them representing safe Democratic districts.
“I don’t think that Democrats’ chances of losing the House are anywhere near one-in-four right now,” said Wasserman. “For Democrats to lose 40 seats, they would have to be facing absolutely catastrophic circumstances, and even if the health care debate turns sour, it’s hard to imagine that Democrats will be losing a ton of ground.”
Silver also pointed to the role of health care legislation, which he said is increasingly looking like a no-win situation for House Democrats.
In his view, if a compromise bill is passed without a public option, the liberal base will become upset and may not be enthusiastic heading into the 2010 midterm elections, where their support will be critical. But if Democrats pass legislation without any assistance from Republicans, the party risks incurring the wrath of independent voters looking for a bipartisan solution. And if no health care reform at all gets passed, the administration and vulnerable members will have spent political capital without getting any results on the administration’s signature issue.
“If you pass a health care bill it doesn’t make you popular, but if you don’t sign any legislation it makes things even worse,” Silver said. “You can’t put the genie back in the bottle. I don’t see what the exit strategy is for the White House. Once they went down this path, they’re going all in here, and you can’t take that bet back.”
Democratic officials privately expect to lose around 10 House seats even under politically stable conditions, and acknowledge that President Obama’s standing in the run up to November 2010 will play a pivotal role in how well they can weather the historical trend.
“When you have big waves like 2006 and 1994, you felt it early and you felt it build. I am not sure we are seeing that. While healthcare is causing some heartburn, it is still an issue that two-thirds of all voters say needs reforming,” said Democratic pollster John Anzalone, who represents many clients in conservative Southern districts.
“It is clearly too early to tell if the Republicans have a chance [to regain control of the House], but at this point I still think it is more like a 10 or 15 percent chance. That may certainly grow. But there are some big battles yet to fight.”
Indeed, those upcoming battles — on health care reform, energy legislation and economic regulation — will be crucial to the fortunes of targeted House Democrats.
Wasserman noted that of the 16 House Democrats who voted against former President Clinton on the controversial budget and assault weapons ban, every single one of them won reelection. If this year’s crop of targeted Democrats resists pressure from leadership and votes in line with their constituencies, Wasserman predicted they can overcome a Republican wave.
Already, many Democrats representing conservative-minded districts have distanced themselves from the national party’s leadership on the most controversial measures. Forty-four Democrats split from their leadership to oppose the cap-and-trade energy legislation — most of them falling in line with the economic interests of their districts.
“It goes to show that voting behavior in Congress matters at the end of the day.” Wasserman said. “Right now, we’re looking at a wave cycle, but the question is will it be a small wave or a major wave. And it matters how these freshman and sophomore members vote to determine how big a wave it will be.”
Note this paragraph, third from bottom:
“Wasserman noted that of the 16 House Democrats who voted against former President Clinton on the controversial budget and assault weapons ban, every single one of them won reelection. If this year’s crop of targeted Democrats resists pressure from leadership and votes in line with their constituencies, Wasserman predicted they can overcome a Republican wave. ”
Kind of puts lie to Blankenhorn’s hypothesis.
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Bill White and Godzilla: Yes! You’re absolutely right! Please tell all your friends and write your congressperson. We need to redouble our efforts in this noble cause to defeat the evil Rethuglikkkans.
Rand: Shhh! Never distract your enemy when he is committing suicide.