EDITOR’S NOTE: There was a major mistake on the earlier of version of this post. This quote of the Day is from a piece on David Frum’s site Frum Forum. It was mistakenly referred to as having been written by Frum and it was in fact written by Arthur Greene. The headline has been corrected and rewritten and so has this post, and I’ve put an item on my Twitter account as well. We regret the error.
Our quote of the day comes Frum Forum writer Arthur Greene. -He argues that health care reform in at least short term political terms will help the Democrats — but makes it clear he thinks the plan is flawed.
Here’s the beginning of his piece:
Republicans counting on Obamacare’s unpopularity to deliver them a win in November seem likely to face disappointment. An honest look at the package shows it’s masterfully designed to deliver a lot of meaningful favors to groups likely to reward Democrats at the polls in November. In particular, senior citizens and middle class families all get immediate benefits while the important costs and externalities resulting from the package won’t take place for some time. Democrats are right to think that people will like the package
.
He goes into the details and concludes with this:
Republicans can’t legitimately call for the repeal of any of this: nearly all of the immediate changes are consensus measures that they incorporated into their own healthcare plans. Even better for Democrats, very few will have short term costs….
None of this means that Obamacare is good policy. The program is still a big government takeover of the healthcare industry that may diminish the quality of healthcare. I’ll benefit but others may lose. The short term changes, furthermore, seem calculated to get votes by catering to get them from people who have anxiety about medical costs rather than helping those — lower-income single people, small business owners, laid-off workers in their 50s — who have the fewest options under the current system.
Politically, however, the Democrats are right. Once people understand the plan, many Americans will like it.
I tend to agree. Political wishful thinking (on the part of the Democrats and Republicans) has been a malady throughout American history. And so has emerging conventional wisdom which can take hold when someone hears or reads a statement from a person or infosource that he or she respects and picks it up. Since info outlets from the time of Fred Flintstone’s newspaper have had to provide content, analysts have to give it their best shot. Which is not always a spot on shot.
Now that the bill is passed the new battle is over which side can best explain what it is and how it is going to unfold. And that has to be coupled with thes vital fact: in mid-term elections voters traditionally trim the sails of the party that holds the White House. Just as GOPers can’t expect to ride this issue to victory, Democrats would be wise not to count on riding this to a big victory, either. Meanwhile, the empty-slate Barack Obama of 2008 upon which people projected what they wished he would be is gone and now the White House has an Obama whose positions are known. For better or worse.
The key on the real political impact of health care reform will likely be on how it was characterized before hand and how by November 2010 that stacks up with both reality and voter conclusions. Who looks as if they were right?
If many Americans who are not partisans who are already ready to love or detest health care reform due to which party passed it feel it a plus as its proponents described and not as toxic to the country as its opponents insisted, it will help the Democrats.
If many Americans who are not partisans who are ready to love or detest health care reform due to which party passed it feel the proponents were hyping something that made no difference or created new big problems or was as bad as its foes said, then the Democrats will suffer.
But there seems to be a partisan standoff right now with party bases of both parties fired up and the country deeply divided. If a consensus emerges on the part of independent voters and reasonable people in BOTH parties about health care reform it will be less due to a hot-button-pushing blowhard on the right or left than to whether thoughtful people believe a)it’s a useless program that won’t help or will hurt our country b)it’s a plus and will make their lives better now and in the future and c)vibes people pick up about which party seems to want to find a solution.
So the rush will be on — to see which party can now explain where we are and where we are going and to see if citizens understand the plan (good or bad) and can sense that there is any initial impact. Simply a conceptual: “You’ll like it in a few years!” won’t be enough. But, as Frum notes, by November some voters may be able to report feeling some impact — and media stories will be detailing how the bill is working and not working by then. If there are substantive media reports of it kicking in, look for the Democrats and the Whtie House to run with it — and at least stem some of the mid-term election erosion.
By November some voters will be able to assess some initial impact and draw their own conclusions — in an election when the Democrats are going to lose some seats no matter what — and other big issues may be more on the front burner at that time as well.
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Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.