In the health-care portfolio, Matt Yglesias and Peter Suderman have been sparring about whether the passage of a health-care bill will benefit the Democrats; Suderman reaches the following conclusion:
So the choice for Democrats may actually be whether they want they want to be portrayed as so single-minded in their determination to push their unpopular agenda on the public that they are willing to use party-line voting and any sort of obscure procedural trickery they can come up with to get it passed, or whether they want to be able to make the argument that they responded to the public's clear concerns and backed off an incredibly unpopular piece of legislation when they had the chance.
That's one way to look at it. Then again, I think the choice for Republicans may actually be whether they want they want to be portrayed as so single-minded in their determination to obstruct a popular president that they are willing to use party-line voting and any sort of obscure procedural trickery they can come up with to prevent his party from governing, or whether they want to be able to make the argument that they responded to the public's clear concerns and backed off an incredibly unpopular legislative strategy when they had the chance.
Governing by poll is generally silly, but if you are going to break down health-care polls, people generally support individual provisions in the bill. They just respond negatively to the politicized package of "health-care reform." And many people who oppose health-care reform actually wish it went further. This should suggest to people who quite reasonably believe both that there is a serious problem with this country's health-care system and that the bills in Congress can fix some of those problems, that the responsible thing to do is pass them. Also, Suderman seems to forget that whether or not the Democrats pivot, Republicans will be criticizing their health-care plan for many months to come, so the Dems might as well pass their bill if they have to pay for it no matter what.
-- Tim Fernholz
