The (Political) Stakes in Health Reform
An excellent point from Mark Kleiman. In 1993, we had a new president elected on a promise of providing access to high-quality affordable health care to all Americans. In 1994, that promise went down in flames. The result of that failure was not only substantively bad, but politically disastrous for Democrats. Now it’s 2009 and we have a new president elected on a promise of providing access to high-quality affordable health care for all Americans. It’s pretty clear that Republicans remember that dealing a humiliating blow to said president by blocking reform will be politically useful to them.
And it’s curious that many centrist Democrats—particular those now eager to delay action on a bill and give special interests and the right more time to kill it—don’t seem to remember this. I’m pretty young, but even I remember what happened.
39 Responses to “The (Political) Stakes in Health Reform”
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July 19th, 2009 at 10:00 am
I question whether the failure of health reform really was a major factor in the ‘94 elections. The House bank scandal, NAFTA, the long overdue realignment of the South, and the tax increases in the deficit reduction bill were far more to blame.
July 19th, 2009 at 10:06 am
Could be. The 1993 failure of health-care reform might have been an effect of Clinton’s weakness at the time (elected without a majority due to the Perot candidacy), rather than a cause of it (though I wouldn’t blame NAFTA much, since most of the 1994 insurgency supported it; nor the tax increases, which almost exclusively affected an affluent cohort already predisposed to vote Republican).
Still, I’m guessing that the failure to pass health-care reform was not helpful to Democrats in swing states and districts, though case studies would be the only way of knowing for sure.
July 19th, 2009 at 10:09 am
Kth, it doesn’t matter if the insurgency ’supported it’. the most corrupt thing about a two party system is that, if the party in charge fucks you over, the only choice you have is to hurt them by electing the other party. The other party’s position won’t even matter.
Democrats clearly support every last bit of Republican trickle-down economic doctrine and giving shitloads of money to the Republicans. yet, they just won two elections in a row because Republicans were in power and supported those very same policies.
July 19th, 2009 at 10:10 am
err ‘to the wealthy’.
Plus, I’d wager just about anything that, come 2012, Voters will kick out Obama do to the jobless recovery the Republicans created. Your view really only applies to countries with parties across a wide political spectrum. It does not apply to duoppolies.
July 19th, 2009 at 10:22 am
“And it’s curious that many centrist Democrats—particular those now eager to delay action on a bill and give special interests and the right more time to kill it—don’t seem to remember this. I’m pretty young, but even I remember what happened.”
My operating assumption all along has been that the centrists Dems do indeed remember this.
And this means they’ll end up voting for cloture. They just want to posture during the late summer dithering before the cloture moment.
The practical effect of is that the WH and Congressional leadership can cram through any bill that they want. We can assemble a good bill with generous subsidies that will be politically popular with the electorate, let the “centrist” Dems trim off 5% so they have their talking points, and still get cloture.
The CBO score will matter in August, but it won’t matter in October.
Put together a good bill that kicks in sooner than 2013, pass it, and reap the political rewards.
July 19th, 2009 at 10:33 am
The Waco disaster inflaming the gun nuts was also a factor in the Republican takeover of ‘94.
July 19th, 2009 at 10:37 am
Another angle to consider which avoids the whole “did health care kill Dems in ‘94 or did they just fail because they were going down” debate is that like 50 fucking house Dems had their careers ended, along with what, 7-8 senators? Being a bunch of chicken shit cowards didn’t save them in ‘94 so they might as well have passed a health care bill.
For an example of a good bill that passed by one vote in each chamber in 1993, look at the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993. Republicans made dire predictions about how it’d collapse the economy because it raised top marginal rates what, like 3%? Then we had a giant economic expansion. Oops.
Yet there was a huge list of winners that sided with Gingrich on that vote from the Democratic side. Like Richard Lehrman, Sam Coppersmith, David Mann, Dave McCurdy, Jill Long Thompson. Taking the brave vote against the FY94 budget really helped propel them to the legendary political heights they all achieved since.
Democrats will demoralize their base for a generation if they fuck this up. Just bite the bullet and pass something good.
July 19th, 2009 at 10:48 am
If the Democrats don’t pass health care, I won’t give them any more money for at four years. I won’t do get out the vote. And I may withhold my vote. This is appalling.
And I think the moderates do remember and don’t mind. They don’t mind siding with insurance companies over getting health care. And they have constituents who believe the nonsense.
July 19th, 2009 at 11:01 am
I don’t think there’s any question that something called ‘healthcare reform’ will be passed this year, with much fanfare and a grandiose name. The conservadems’ priority is making it a bad plan, one that could theoretically cover everyone but in reality will remain costly & inefficient (to preserve donors’ profitability)… then, as people remain uninsured, they’ll be blamed for making the wrong choices. The GOP also wants a lousy plan that will fall far short of insuring everyone and keep profits high, but they also want it to be as structurally weak as possible so that a) voters will be frustrated and underserved enough to vote for Republicans because ‘government can’t do anything right,’ and b) they can further weaken it as much as possible whenever and wherever they hold enough power to do so.
But at this point, I’d say that at least the Dems in question expect for a plan to pass and to accept early credit for it.
July 19th, 2009 at 11:04 am
I think it’s more a question of negative fall-out if the Dems don’t pass this rather than any thing particularly positive that will happen because of a bill by 2012.
It’s what people voted in the Dems to do. If they don’t pass it, they’re screwed — maybe not (ironically enough) the Blue Dogs but everyone else.
The fact is, Kleiman is right,
July 19th, 2009 at 11:05 am
Our household is going Green Party, but we encourage everyone to vote for any independent candidate. As long as there are no R’s or D’s.
The two-party party going on has got to end, along with our insane campaign bribery laws- something has got to give in this corrupt, entrenched system of ours.
July 19th, 2009 at 11:13 am
The more important thing for Obama to be pondering will be his own political future. He can go like Clinton, or like Carter.
July 19th, 2009 at 11:28 am
It’s not memory, it’s money.
Blue Dog and Moderate Democrats have their corporate sponsors to appease. For-profit health care clearly expects a return on their investment in Corporacrats.
July 19th, 2009 at 11:28 am
The more important thing for Obama to be pondering will be his own political future. He can go like Clinton, or like Carter.
How about neither? Obama is his own person.
July 19th, 2009 at 11:40 am
Veto! Love to see it. Love to see all the blood, toil, tears, and sweat our beloved Senators are pouring forth in the hot Washington sun go right down the drain.
Give ‘em a “nice try boys and girls! Now get back work, you worthless sons of a bitches, and do it right this time.”
July 19th, 2009 at 11:49 am
What they likely remember is hurriedly passing a nearly trillion dollar stimulus bill that nobody read or understood, which turned out to be ineffective, and a porkulus. In short, a waste of money and political capital.
Democrats have been screwing up massively and some are smart enough not to go down the same road. Bait and switch as governance isn’t going over well.
July 19th, 2009 at 11:58 am
How about FDR instead?
July 19th, 2009 at 12:29 pm
“Centrist” Democrats are conservative. However, they are neither racists nor religious nuts. Their electorates lack sufficient critical mass of racists and religious nuts to unseat them from the right, and liberals to unseat them from the left.
They really did believe in the Bush tax cut and they really don’t believe in public option for health care.
July 19th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
Failure is good for Democrats too. After all, it allows them to continue to run on a platform of universal health care, without actually having to make the difficult and unpopular choices involved in adopting it.
July 19th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
Shooter242,
You are such a liar. Most of money in the stimulus hasn’t even been spent so to claim that the stimulus is a failure is dishonest.
July 19th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
I appreciate is when trolls lard up their comments with cult language like “porkulus.”
It makes it even easier to know there’s nothing in there worth reading.
July 19th, 2009 at 1:22 pm
NAFTA had nothing to do with the ‘94 defeat.
It was the result of the assault weapons ban, the way the tax increases were spun, the arrogance of the Democratic Congressional leadership (e.g., welfare reform, which Clinton promised, was put on the back burner), and the failure to reform health care.
July 19th, 2009 at 1:39 pm
[...] Atrios, famous for his insight and pith, pithily and insightfully says: I don’t think the failure of health care reform in ‘93 was the sole reason that the Dems lost in ‘94, but it certainly was a contributing factor. [...]
July 19th, 2009 at 1:57 pm
Ergotism: “Republicans promise things to their constituents. They promise theocracy, patriarchy, and war, and they deliver.”
True. It makes me wish I could be a Republican smuck instead of a Democratic smuck. At least Republican smucks get what they ask for.
July 19th, 2009 at 2:17 pm
Or, rather than forgetting what happened in ‘94, perhaps centrist Democrats are just DOING THE RIGHT THING right now in being reluctant to enact bad legislation.
July 19th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
Yeah, Rich. And the fact that the Democrats cheerlead the war in Iraq had nothing to do with their epic loss in 2002. Also, Al Gore lost in 2000 because he ran too far to the right, forcing millions of otherwise loyal Democrats into Pat Buchanan’s arms.
Because people like you really do think pissing the base off endlessly comes with no problems, and only pissing off old white dudes matters.
July 19th, 2009 at 2:30 pm
soullite Says:
July 19th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
…Al Gore lost in 2000 because he ran too far to the right…
Al Gore lost in 2000 because he is a boring, pedantic speaker; because the GOP painted him as a serial liar; and because Bill Clinton couldn’t keep his zipper closed.
July 19th, 2009 at 3:18 pm
It isn’t as though the politicos were afraid of the hugely depressing effects of getting kicked out of office. Look at Tom Daschle. Once out of office, he became accustomed to the perks of having a chauffered Lincoln, a salary that put him in the top .50 percentile, a house in D.C., and of course the power and influence to screw the people behind the scenes, all on behalf of the insurance industry.
In 1994, the Dems went into the election having accomplished nothing but a tax hike. If the Dems go into another election in which they have again shown that, outside the rhetoric, they are the same as the GOP, why not vote for classic GOP? When you depress the intermediaries who work for you, it is pretty much guaranteed that you lose.
July 19th, 2009 at 4:25 pm
Just call him … President Nobody.
“If you like what you’re getting, keep it,” Obama said. “[President] Nobody is forcing you to shift.”
July 19th, 2009 at 4:26 pm
It has always been my impression that the Dems were wiped out in 94 because of NAFTA. There was a Perot constituency in 92 that worried about NAFTA, and the Clinton administration spat in their faces.
That was an example of the Dems ignoring the voters in favor of their corporate donors. Screwing up healthcare reform this time will similarly be the Dems ignoring their voters in favor of their corporate donors. People are going to be so furious, that it is actually scary to consider what will happen if the Dems screw this up.
I do hope they realize that nothing less than the future of their party is at stake. But the Republicans have already shown how a party can sacrifice its electoral future in the name of greed, arrogance and stupidity.
July 19th, 2009 at 5:12 pm
And this means they’ll end up voting for cloture. They just want to posture during the late summer dithering before the cloture moment.
I hope Petey is right. I suspect in addition to general posturing there’s the desire for bribes — ie., gifts of government taxpayer money that can be presented to constituents as gifts.
Still, I tend to fear that anybody politically successful enough to get to Congress probably has a pretty good idea of how to win elections, and I’m afraid that the simple fact of it is that an excessively large number of American voters don’t follow the issue enough to comprehend the major boost to economic security they’ll realize by living in a country where medical treatments can’t bankrupt one. I mean, Mitch McConnell was spinning one absurdity after another on MTP this morning, but what percentage of the electorate in Nebraska is capable of discerning this?
I’ve gone from optimism to pessimism and back again several times now with respect to the chances for passage of healthcare reform. Now I’m back at pessimism. We shall see. I think Obama ought to take advantage of the country’s economic distress by pushing for passage of legislation. I’ve often found that a key to success in life is turning lemons into lemonade. Worsening economic conditions make passage less likely, so goes the conventional wisdom, but why succumb to that inevitability? Obama should go to Detroit, and deliver a major speech whose theme is something along the lines of:
Rinse and repeat, ideally not in Michigan but in as many distressed red/purple areas as possible…
July 19th, 2009 at 9:17 pm
Actually, it was the tax increases. Polls at the time showed that a majority of voters whose taxes did not go up, believed that they did.
July 19th, 2009 at 10:53 pm
I don’t think so, because the people actually want reform, and in the intervening years between ‘94 and now, the Republicans have been in power for plenty of time and haven’t done a thing towards providing it. So it’s clear to the American people that while the Democrats might not be great at passing reform, Republicans aren’t interested in even trying. In any case, the only barrier to reform is not public opinion but rather the internal dynamics of Washington and its lobbies. If we had a national referendum tomorrow we’d have universal healthcare with a public option by Wednesday.
July 19th, 2009 at 10:56 pm
Which is exactly what the GOP wants you to do.
July 19th, 2009 at 11:00 pm
I agree we should get rid of the Rs and Ds, but the order is important. In particular, it should be noted that at this point, for most elections, voting Green doesn’t actually result in getting a Green elected. So even if your D choice is only marginally more D than your R choice, it makes sense to make the marginal improvement. If enough Greens vote D, then maybe some more Ds can win elections, and eventually we’ll have a D nation, against which the Greens can compete without the danger of accidentally contributing to the election of an R.
July 19th, 2009 at 11:01 pm
Of course, the real solution is some form of IRV, but we haven’t even given up the electoral college yet, so don’t keep your hopes up.
July 20th, 2009 at 1:59 am
[...] [...]
July 20th, 2009 at 2:19 am
I think if it fails, no future in the U.S.
July 20th, 2009 at 11:20 pm
[...] be punished in the ‘10 midterms if they fail to pass health care reform this year. Matthew Yglesias writes: “In 1993, we had a new president elected on a promise of providing access to [...]