There was no health care bounce. In fact, there has been something of a health care swoon.
Democrats have seen the favorable rating of their party drop to the lowest level ever recorded by Gallup — 41 percent — and the president’s job approval rating remains below 50 percent.
Now, as Congress returns to work after a two-week Easter break, the choice before the majority party is this: keep plunging ahead or start running for cover?
President Obama is brimming with transformational ideas. Aside from ratifying a controversial nuclear treaty and confirming a new liberal Supreme Court justice, Obama wants new rules on bank bailouts, immigration reform and global warming legislation.
But Democrats are feeling skittish after being back among their constituents.
Rep. Bart Stupak gave up his bid for a 10th term as tea partiers swarmed his Michigan district. Stupak’s retreat on his abortion concerns in the president’s health plan allowed the bill to become law. His flip-flop also seems to have undone his career.
His fellow Democrats were mostly mum about health care during the spring break.
When they did speak publicly, it was about bringing home the appropriations bacon or their efforts to create jobs.
Freshman Rep. Dina Titus of Nevada, who won her suburban Las Vegas district in 2008 with an Obama tailwind, had a meeting with female doctors to discuss the legislation but otherwise stayed low.
“It’s more of a teaching tour than a selling tour,” she told the Associated Press.
Titus now trails former Republican state Sen. Joe Heck by 5 points, and there is little sign that her constituents are in a mood to be educated.
In Nevada, opposition to Obamacare runs 16 points ahead of support, with those strongly opposed outnumbering those strongly in favor by 2-to-1.
Lawmakers from Ohio, Florida, Colorado, Pennsylvania and other states with hot legislative races know the numbers well — Obama’s job approval in the low 40s, his health program doing even worse and the strongest anti-incumbent sentiment ever recorded.
Titus and her fellow Democrats chanted and cheered in a celebration of in-your-face partisanship at the White House when Obama signed the health bill on March 23. She and other vulnerable Democrats seem to be returning to Washington with less of an appetite for smack talk.
Looking at an average of polls, one finds Republicans with an advantage of more than 5 points in the national congressional ballot.
These are very dire numbers for Democrats since Republicans usually perform a few points better on Election Day than they do in surveys.
The analysis of past results by Nate Silver, whose work at FiveThirtyEight.com is revered in Democratic circles, suggests that if Republicans were to perform as suggested by the polls today, it would mean a loss of more than 50 seats in the House for Democrats and an 11-seat majority for Republicans.
The central argument among Democratic strategists for passing President Obama’s health care program was that it would boost voter intensity on the Left.
Democratic voters did become more enthusiastic after health care passage. About 35 percent of blue America told Gallup they were fired up — an 11-point jump after Obamacare became law. But Republican enthusiasm, already at historic highs, jumped from 42 percent pre-Obamacare to 54 percent now.
Obama convinced his fellow Democrats to try European-style politics to go with European-style policies.
Euro-crats didn’t much care if citizens wanted to accept the European Union or the euro. They jammed their policies through and then set about on education tours.
But because of America’s much stronger resentment of centralized authority and the cruel certainty of a two-year House election cycle, Democrats can no longer dismiss the possibility of a crushing defeat.
Republican strategist Gary Andres calls passage of Obamacare over strong popular resistance a “Tylenol moment.”
When a fiend tampered with a few Tylenol bottles in 1982, public confidence in what had been a venerable brand was devastated. It took years for Tylenol to recover, and by then Advil and others had grabbed a permanent slice of market share.
Other issues will come to the fore in the next 28 weeks, but Democrats have permanently damaged their brand as the party of the people.
Now that the idea of a health care bounce has deflated and Democrats are campaigning in earnest, the White House will be hard-pressed to find support for Obama’s transformative agenda.
Chris Stirewalt is the political editor of The Washington Examiner. He can be reached at [email protected].
