Pollster Scott Rasmussen reports that support for Democratic health care bills declines when the “government option” health insurance provision is removed. Essentially, this repels some Democrats without attracting significant numbers of Republicans and Independents.
I think this strengthens the position of the 60 or so left House Democrats who threaten to oppose any health care bill without a government option. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, out of both conviction and calculation I think, has stated that any bill that passes the House will have include the government option. But even so the Senate is not likely to pass a bill with the government option. This could set up a standoff in conference committee or a conference committee result that would be very difficult to pass in one house or the other.
Meanwhile, a story in this morning’s Washington Post says that the Obama White House has been surprised by the way attention has focused on the public option. This seems not very credible. I suspect it’s spin designed to dust back the left Democrats—and a sign that their threat to oppose a bill without the government option is being taken more seriously than heretofore.
Generally in legislation it’s assumed that a compromise tends to maximize support for a measure. Remove a provision obnoxious to some large number of legislators (like the government option) and you’ll increase support for it. But the left Democrats’ threat, and the polling evidence that rank-and-file Democrats won’t be satisfied with a bill without the government option, suggests that this kind of compromise might actually reduce support and make it impossible to get a majority for any bill.
Skillful legislative leaders often manage to navigate their way to majorities in such circumstances. But it’s not inevitable. Sometimes there is not a center that will hold. Remember that Richard Nixon’s guaranteed annual income bill was defeated by a combination of conservatives who wouldn’t back any such bill and liberals who believed it did not go far enough. Daniel Patrick Moynihan tells the story, in his inimitable fashion, in The Politics of a Guaranteed Income: The Nixon Administration and the Family Assistance Program.
