Dave Weigel is baffled by liberal silence on Paul Ryan and the recently passed Republican budget:
The town halls of 2009—dry runs in June, and really volcanic ones in August—changed the way that Washington talked about the law that would become the Affordable Care Act. And there was a science to them. Democrats took a long, lumbering time to figure that science out. But they haven't copied it. Not yet.
The lack of anger on display leaves an impression: Perhaps Ryan's Medicare plan isn't inducing mass panic as the Democrats' Medicare plans did. (That would be something, because the Medicare spending cuts in "ObamaCare" and the reforms in Ryan's bill are not worlds apart.) If that impression sticks, Republicans will return to Washington in May with the knowledge that the polls are a little overheated and Ryan's budget is a go.
This is strange, doubly so because it's a situation in which Democrats don't actually have to worry about alienating independents or their moderate supporters; 65 percent of Americans oppose Ryan's plan in the abstract, and 84 percent oppose it when given the specifics. Democrats aren't known for their tactical acumen, but it doesn't take a competent political party to capitalize on this kind of advantage. As it stands, however, Democrats have done little -- outside of a few ads -- to take their opposition to the public, which is dangerous. Public opinion is shaped, in part, by the perception of elite consensus. The August 2009 town halls did little to disrupt the health-care reform bill as it made its way through the Senate, but they were integral to tainting the bill as irrevocably partisan and shattering its favorability among moderates and independents, even if those voters liked the bill's particulars.
Unlike the Affordable Care Act, the Republican budget is irrevocably partisan, and Democrats are well-positioned to make this fact stick with the public. I, however, won't hold my breath.
