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It's well-known that the Clinton administration and its few liberal allies were badly outspent during the 1994 health care reform battle, but it's not as well understood that they were badly out-organized, too. This snippet from the PBS timeline of the fight gives a good sense of how the battle played out:Keeping America's Health Insurance Plans Profitable health reform, they'll be greatted by a 300-person, Health Care for America Now counter-protest.
Trying to win back the kind of political support that brought them to the White House, the administration plans a bus trek across America to generate their own grassroots message to Congress for reform. A kickoff rally in Portland, Oregon, is marred by anti-Clinton protesters. When the first buses reach the highway they find a broken-down bus wreathed in red tape symbolizing government bureaucracy and hitched to a tow truck labeled, "This is Clinton Health Care." The anti-bus trek protests are the crowning success of the No Name Coalition and especially of the conservative political interest group Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE). By the time the ill-fated bus caravan takes to the highways, CSE operatives, working closely -- and secretly -- with Newt Gingrich's Capitol Hill office and with Republican senators, have mapped out plans to derail the Reform Riders wherever they go. Following several days of anti-Hillary rhetoric on local talk shows, Hillary Clinton -- at a bus rally in Seattle -- is confronted by hundreds of angry men shouting that the Clintons are going to destroy their way of life, ban guns, extend abortion rights, protect gays, and socialize medicine. When she finishes speaking and tries to leave the rally, her Iimousine is surrounded by protesters. Each of the four caravan routes becomes an expedition into enemy territory -- with better-armed, better-prepared, better-mobilized anti-Clinton protesters at each stop along the way.This stuff matters. It makes the papers, it's seen by the staff of crucial Congressmen, it decides which powerful local politicians will come out in support of the plan. So it's interesting to note that next week, when America's Health Insurance Plans have their first big roundtable discussion on
