Some fascinating numbers from a Quinnipiac national poll on Democratic health care plans. By a 55%-35% margin, voters are more worried that Congress will add to the deficit than that it will fail to pass a health care bill. By a 57%-37% margin, voters oppose passing a health care bill if it adds “significantly” to the federal budget deficit. By an overwhelming 72%-21% margin, voters believe Barack Obama won’t keep his promise to reform health care without adding to the deficit. And they disapprove by a 52%-39% margin of Obama’s performance on health care, a reversal of their 46%-42% approval in a July 1 Quinnipiac poll. By a 36%-21% margin they believe a Democratic health care plan will hurt rather than improve the quality of their health care, with 39% saying it would make no difference.
These are devastating results. Our charming and articulate president and the highly skilled congressional leaders of his party have succeeded, over the last two months, in stirring up opposition to what they have made their prime public policy initiative. As Quinnipiac’s Peter Brown puts it, “President Barack Obama and Democratic leaders in Congress appear to be losing the public relations war over their plan to revamp the nation’s health care system.”
There is some good news for the Democrats in this poll. Significant majorities voice approval for some components of Democratic plans: a “government option” health care plan, higher taxes on high earners, insurance subsidies for families of four with incomes up to $88,000 [!], requiring employers to provide health insurance or pay a fine to the government. But even bigger majorities—68%–oppose requiring people to have health insurance or taxing employees for health care benefits.
As former Bush White House economics adviser Keith Hennessey points out, a key feature of Democratic insurance proposals—community ratings (insurance premiums not based on health status)—doesn’t work without an individual mandate (requiring people to buy insurance). And that is opposed, Quinnipiac tells us, by 68% of voters. And, as Hennessey also points out and as the Congressional Budget Office has certified, those subsidies which so many voters favor would produce those budget deficits which a large majority of voters oppose, with their opposition trumping any desire to see a health care bill passed.
So now we have the spectacle of the White House trying to demonize the health insurers which it was not so long ago romancing and trying to label as “mobs” and “astroturf” voters who show up at town meetings and voice opposition to Democratic health care proposals—this from a president who during his campaign urged his supporters to respond to those opposing him by “get[ting] in their faces.” These seem like desperation tactics to me. Most Americans are pretty happy with their health insurance because, for one reason, they can choose a different plan every year. It’s not irrational for them to fear getting shoved into a government plan which, to save money, will ration care.
As Ralph Benko noted in a recent Examiner column, the attempts of Democratic party organizations and their allies to generate an outpouring of support for Democratic health care bill have produced a pathetically small response. Those email lists which generated so many contributions and volunteer efforts during the campaign have generated almost nothing. As Jonathan Klingler
has argued, this is partly an example of the phenomenon that the outs tend to have more enthusiasm and energy than the ins, and that it’s easier to generate volunteer activity for a campaign whose platform is inevitably ambiguous than for concrete proposals which are inevitably problematic.
But I think something more is happening here. The balance of enthusiasm has changed. One of the less commented on features of our politics in this decade has been the huge expansion of voter turnout, from 105 million in 2000 to 122 million in 2004 and 131 million in 2008. These increases were generated by campaign organizations (including the brilliantly targeted efforts of the Obama campaign) but were also a spontaneous expression of enthusiasm—both for and against George W. Bush in 2004, for Barack Obama and against Bush in 2008.
You don’t do an unnatural thing like going to a congressman’s town hall meeting to express opposition to a health care proposal just because you got a robocall from someone from Cigna or Aetna. They don’t dragoon poor people into buses the way Acorn does. You go because you feel really, really strongly about some issue. There are, after all, organizers on both sides. The organizers favoring the Democratic health care plans aren’t able to generate any significant. The organizers opposing the Democratic health care plans are. And, as in the 2008 Obama campaign, a lot of people are turning out of their own spontaneous accord.
In the politics of this decade, enthusiasm provides critical leverage. Leverage up and leverage down. In 2004 the balance of enthusiasm worked in favor of the Bush campaign (most political reporters missed this, because they couldn’t imagine that anyone was enthusiastically for Bush). In 2008 the balance of enthusiasm worked in favor of the Obama campaign.
Now the balance of enthusiasm seems to have shifted once again.
