In California, there's a fierce battle being waged over the Schwarzenegger-Nunez health reform plan. It's a proposal much like that of the leading Democrats -- a universal health insurance mandate, heavy subsidies, a public insurer, a requirement that private insurers spend 85% of every premium dollar on care, etc. But it has its enemies. Some of those enemies are on the right. Some of them, like the California Nurses Association, are on the left. I've spoken to the Nurses about their objections, and I didn't find them terribly convincing. But reasonable people can disagree. This post is about the voice they're using to attack the plan: Barack Obama's. The Nurses just released a new radio ad that plays an extended clip of Barack Obama arguing against mandates. Juggles the names around a bit, make the opening line say "this ad paid for by the Republican National Committee," and I think you have a pretty good idea of what one of the ads will look like during the next major health reform fight. This is why so many of us raged against Obama's arguments on mandates. The absence of a mandate in his plan was a minor disappointment. But his decision to launch an assault on the very idea of the individual mandate was a major problem. It's overwhelmingly likely that the next incarnation of universal health care will be based around an individual mandate. And when that happens, it's overwhelmingly likely that the airwaves will be blanketed with Barack Obama's arguments against it, even as Obama supports the eventual plan from his seat in the Senate or place in the White House (and he will -- his plan has a mandate for children, and he's repeatedly professed openness to a mandate for adults). This is politics, and Obama did what he felt he needed to do to protect himself from Clinton and Edwards. But in doing, he assured that it will be his clips that opponents of reform replay as they try and kill universal health care next time. That will put him in an awkward position as he attempts to advocate for it, and his supporters in an awkward position as they try to defend it. And none of it was necessary.
