“Obamacare”
One thing I’ve noticed is that conservatives like to call whichever health care proposal they’re criticizing at the moment (they oppose all health care proposals because they believe, irrespective of the merits, that a defeat will serve their interests) “Obamacare” even though the proposals are different and often don’t fully reflect the White House point-of-view. What’s interesting about this, to me, is that it’s basically just a tick. The right labeled the Clinton administration’s 1994 proposal “HillaryCare” and they also beat it. So now there’s a new health care debate, so let’s trot out the term “Obamacare.”
Back in the real world, though, Barack Obama is really popular. Probably more popular than any particular health reform initiative. Labeling something “Obamacare” is going to make it more popular. The right should be slagging on Dingellcare and Baucuscare and Doddcare. Nobody knows who those guys are, and people generally take a dim view of members of congress other than their own.
34 Responses to ““Obamacare””
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July 17th, 2009 at 9:18 am
The point of “obama-care” is that the federal gov’t will be running the health care system.
July 17th, 2009 at 9:19 am
Back in the real world, though, Barack Obama is really popular.
Not with their base. You might consider the possibility that they aren’t quite the idiots they assume. Maybe they stoke the base in an off year and wait for opportunities, knowing that their effect on the passage of healthcare legislation is likely to be minimal.
July 17th, 2009 at 9:22 am
I like “The PeloSystem”.
By the way, I’m sure bluesmoke is correct about the reasoning behind this tactic, and I’m equally sure Matt is correct that despite their intentions, this tactic will actually just serve to make a government role in providing health care insurance more popular.
July 17th, 2009 at 9:24 am
SomeCallMeTim,
Of course in some sense both views could be true: they could understand that their current tactics and strategies aren’t necessarily going to be helping their standing among the general public, but their base could also be giving them no choice.
July 17th, 2009 at 9:24 am
I doubt they’re trying to sink health care reform so much as they’re trying to sink Obama’s approval rating, by tying him to proposals they suspect will ultimately prove unpopular and fruitless.
July 17th, 2009 at 9:25 am
we should call the current system boehner care.
July 17th, 2009 at 9:26 am
oops, make that boehner care
July 17th, 2009 at 9:27 am
I’m not convinced that many Republicans much care what happens to health care (or the economy, or the environment, etc.) at the end of the day. For them, getting their own guys back in charge is the end, not the means.
July 17th, 2009 at 9:29 am
Dammit, upyernoz beat me to it.
July 17th, 2009 at 9:35 am
“Never attribute to malice that which can be more easily ascribed to stupidity.”
Damn, back when Rove, Addington, and Yoo were busy undermining the constitution, you at least could believe that someone smart was running the Republican machine. The intellectual shallowness of this crop of clowns is nearly as creepy. Most of them don’t even seem to comprehend that Obama is popular.
July 17th, 2009 at 10:13 am
They could call it what the govt’s involvement in health care already is…medicare. But that’s hugely popular, so they say the new health care will hurt medicare, but those against reform were against Medicare!
July 17th, 2009 at 10:17 am
I think “care” will cause them more problems than the surname prefixing it, to be honest– they used”Hillarycare” sarcastically, tying it in with the coldhearted, ball-breaking image of her they’d already cultivated. But Obama is popular in part because he’s perceived as, well, caring about what happens to ordinary people, and right now, people want care on a variety of levels. No one believes that Republicans care about anyone other than their political allies; that’s why so many now argue openly that protecting the rank and file weakens moral fiber, which is more honest but a far cry from ‘compassionate conservatism.’
July 17th, 2009 at 10:24 am
Obama’s popularity is starting to fade – mostly because the economy still sucks. This is why he’s in such a hurry to get a bill – any bill – passed.
July 17th, 2009 at 10:36 am
I think calling it Dingle-Dodd Healthcare would work best, just because it sounds silly.
July 17th, 2009 at 10:41 am
James Robertson,
Nevertheless, Obama is still popular despite the rightwing noise machine.
July 17th, 2009 at 11:01 am
That’s pretty typical for conservative politics – they try to identify an idea or policy with a specific individual, then go after the individual and policy in the hopes that it will tarnish both. Witness how they continue to refer to global warming as “Gore-ism” and “Al Gore’s Global Warming”, and how they referred to people who believe in evolution as “Darwinists”.
July 17th, 2009 at 11:03 am
Nah, Matt. That would fail for exactly the reason you mention: people don’t know who those members of Congress are. If Republicans were going around complaining about “Baucuscare”, most voters wouldn’t have a clue what they are talking about and would tune them out. In contrast, everybody knows what “Obamacare” is: it’s whatever bill the President ends up signing.
July 17th, 2009 at 11:06 am
Starting to fade, but still way up there. Personally I think this is more of an attempt to hang any failure of the plan directly around his neck. If they just wanted to stop it from passing, then they’d be calling it Dingellcare. Nobody is going to vote for something called Dingellcare.
July 17th, 2009 at 11:07 am
Is Obama still “really” popular? I know he’s got approval ratings that Bush would’ve killed for in his second term (And Clinton in his first), but they seem to have come off the stratospheric height they were at. Still, I’d guess you’re right that he’s more popular than any particular health care bill (which people wouldn’t fully understand, or know about, and I feel like support for policy is ALWAYS soft), and certainly more popular than any of the Republicans.
“Not with their base.”
Probably not. But in the last few years- and ESPECIALLY in the present health care debate- OBAMA’s base has been the one that’s organized, engaged, and effective. And playing solely to your base has the unfortunate side effect of getting the other guy’s base to coalesce around him (as well as pushing everyone else toward that guy, too). So I’m still not sure this is a good idea.
July 17th, 2009 at 11:59 am
A similar thing has happened with the word “Socialism.” People hear Rush and Sean and Levin frothing, and think, well, if progressive income taxes, good health care, education, and keeping arsenic out of the drinking water is socialism, I guess you can sign me up.
The old magic formulas and totems just aren’t working any more. Hillary Clinton could be made into an object of hatred, and her name attached in ridicule to a over-ambitious, poorly-executed health care plan in order to sink it. But just shouting “Obama!” won’t get anyone exercised beyond the rural white evangelicals who backed Bush to the end.
“Obamacare? Why, yes, Obama does care! I bet he’s got a good plan!” is likely to be the reaction from most of the country.
You listen to much talk radio lately? These guys are _scared._ They feel their power and privilege slipping away from them.
July 17th, 2009 at 12:12 pm
We shouldn’t make fun of the Republicans regarding health care, considering they have dominated Democrats yet again. In fact, they have forced Democrats to bow down and lick their boots.
Because of the big, bad Republicans, health care “reform” is a tangled mess, and it is getting messier. There are four major health care plans floating around, dozens of feeder plans, every Congressman and Senator is weighing on the matter, and all the major vested interests have been allowed a seat at the table to add to the chatter. It is a three ring circus, if ever there was one, with everybody involved -except the American people.
And all this nightmarish effort to produce a what will likely be a nebulous 5,000 page bill will have been the result of efforts toward bi-partisanship, the dread fear amongst Democrats of making the big meanies, the Republicans and their vested interests, mad at them.
And the beauty of all this ass kissing; the Republicans, THE MAJOR VOICE in the action, are going vote against whatever weak plan survives, 215 to 3.
July 17th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
I suspect the main purpose for calling it “Obamacare” is to rally their Obama-hating base for 2010 fundraising.
Judging by wingnut acquaintances on facebook, their anti-health care reform message focuses on three points:
1. Tying it to Obama, so as to fit it into their “every single thing Obama does is outrageous and unamerican” daily drumbeat.
2. OMG SOCIALISM! The joke being passed around is that “if America socializes medicine then Canadians will have nowhere to go.”
3. It’s being “rushed” and no one has even read the bill! Clearly, the party of Tom DeLay has a short memory. And, of course, this ties in nicely with the Blue Dogs’ delay tactics.
July 17th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
“Back in the real world, though, Barack Obama is really popular.”
It’s interesting. I never heard many people in public talk about all the horrible things Bush was doing. But the last few months I’ve heard several wingers starting up conversations with people by saying that the country is about to perish because of Obama. It happened twice in the last few weeks. (E.g., to a store clerk: “I’d better drink up my coffee now before Obama gets through with the country and there’s nothing left.”
July 17th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
“3. It’s being “rushed” and no one has even read the bill! ” True. This was a big part of the teabagger message.
July 17th, 2009 at 1:12 pm
Max424 appears unaware of how Congress works on a good day–there is no such thing as The Immaculate Legislation.
July 17th, 2009 at 1:42 pm
I thought just that thing when I saw the headline on today’s Washington Examiner. Seems pretty juvenile to me.
July 17th, 2009 at 1:43 pm
Obama’s popularity has been “starting to fade” since about April 2008.
One of these times, the people saying this will be right.
July 17th, 2009 at 1:48 pm
Obama has been concentrating on foreign policy in his public appearances lately. It’s only this week he’s come back to make a big media push for health care.
I predict support for “Obamacare” will rise as it is increasingly linked in the public mind to, you know, that Muslim fella what gives those good speeches.
July 17th, 2009 at 2:23 pm
The point of calling it ‘Obamacare’ is the other way around: they expect to defeat it in the public marketplace of ideas, and when they do, they want to chip away at Obama’s popularity in the process.
July 17th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
@25 DTM “Max424 appears unaware of how Congress works on a good day–there is no such thing as The Immaculate Legislation.”
I am well aware, DTM. I think that was the exact point I was making in my comment.
In the last two months Health Insurance Companies have hired 350 ex-congressman and their staffers to lobby against “Obamacare.” They have already poured millions of dollars into negative TV adds, with tens of millions more to come. These were the same people who, prior, had met with Obama and declared they would be fully cooperative with the administration, and would magically cut health care costs $2 trillion, by themselves, over ten years.
Recently, four CEO’s of Insurance Companies were so confident in their newfound opposing positions they pledged, before Congress, that they would continue to rescind client’s health care policies for “prior conditions” as often as was legally possible. No contrition. No remorse.
I believe that by allowing the entirety of the Medical Industrial Complex a full seat at the negotiating table we have given them the upper hand, making large-scale, effective reform of the present “health care system” nearly impossible via the legislation avenue.
The Republican victory I was referring to was a result, I believe, of them knocking out single-payer in the first round. Single-payer, I think we could agree, would have been a much simpler process for everyone involved once it got to the legislative phase. But whatever we after right now, and it is not clear to me, at all what we are after, is certainly complex as hell, and complexity, in my opinion, serves Republican interests quite nicely.
I am not negative by nature, but I am a hardcore realist, and I believe the Republicans, if this were a twelve round prizefight, would be ahead on the score sheet seven rounds to zero.
July 17th, 2009 at 3:23 pm
The Republicans are irrelevant. There aren’t enough of them to explain the track the legislation has taken.
Democrats can accomplish gridlock all they themselves, thank you very much.
July 17th, 2009 at 5:05 pm
SomeCallMeTim Says: Not with their base. ~~Don’t you mean their baseLESS.
Boehner Care ~ Gov’t sponsored Viagra, that oughta stick it to them.
How about RepubliCare – because it truly will be ineffective after bi-partisanship and bribery, sometimes known as Ear Marks, that will go to the Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats to get them on board – NEEDLESSLY.
July 18th, 2009 at 4:08 am
I think people would recognize the name “Pelosicare.”
July 18th, 2009 at 8:28 am
I think people would recognize the name “Pelosicare.”
Pelosiscare would work even better.
It’s a testimony to how much on the skids the modern Republican party is when liberals on blogs can come up with better anti-Dem buzzwords than they can.
As someone point out about, “Obamacare” just causes people to think. “Ah. Obama Cares! I love that guy! Woohoo!”