I don't doubt the sincerity of Bart Stupak or the rest of the Stupak Democrats in voting nay on healthcare reform because of opposition to public funding for abortion. But it might also be that they want to show that they stood up to the President and House Democrats on this bill, even when they voted yea.
If Nancy Pelosi can bring off a win under the circumstances described in my last post, then she will go down as one of the most effective speakers in the history of the House. If she doesn't, it is largely because she is swimming against two powerful tidal forces.
One tide is public opinion. Republicans may be foolish to rely on that as it is, after all, tidal. Nonetheless, the fact that public opinion has been steadily against the Democrats is one of two main reasons that this reform has proved to be so difficult. It's not just the polls that show steady opposition to the reform. Pro-reform pundits like to point out that individual items in the ObamaCare bills are popular. Yes, but those items aren't available for purchase separately. I'm in favor of cases of expensive wine. I just don't want to pay for them.
What can't be wished away is the fact that, as President Obama has given speech after speech and has invested more and more of his time and political capital on this issue, he has become steadily less popular. In most polls his approval rating is under 50%. Likewise, the Democrats as a whole have suffered. Republicans lead Democrats on the generic question (which party are you voting for, without candidates mentioned). Historically, Democrats always lead in this type of poll; and when they lead only by a little, they get shellacked.
The other tide is the red tide: rising federal debt. It is that, more than anything else, that is exerting a downward gravitational force on the Democrats. Most folks just can't see the wisdom in a big, new entitlement when all the existing ones are going belly up.
Such pressures are not borne by mere mortals without mental distortion as a result. Consider this story, from the Washington Post:
Democratic leaders said Thursday that they were increasingly inclined to release a final health-care bill that could accomplish two of President Obama's top domestic priorities: guaranteeing coverage to 30 million uninsured Americans and vastly expanding federal aid for college students.
Note that "vastly expanding" language. Maybe this is the way to rally wavering Democrats to the flag, but surely it's nuts anyway. What do student loans have to do with health care? Doesn't this look like another big giveaway to buy votes?
It looks a lot worse than that. This also from the WaPo:
The projected cost of President Obama's plan to overhaul the federal student loan program has exploded over the past year, making it almost impossible to include the popular measure in the same deficit-reduction package that would be the vehicle for the final pieces of Obama's health care initiative, Democratic sources said on Wednesday…
[R]ather than saving $50 billion over the next decade, Obama's student loan initiative is now projected to increase deficits by about $5 billion over that period, Democratic sources said, adding that including it in the same package with fixes to the health care bill would wreck efforts to meet the deficit-reduction goals that are required under reconciliation rules.
Apparently the Democrats worry that we aren't going broke fast enough. If people are worried that healthcare reform will break the bank, add another piece of legislation that costs more than we can pay for it. This is ObamaCare Derangement Syndrome. I think we can now call it ODS.
Michael Barone has argued that there is no way out for the Democrats. They are damned if they pass ObamaCare, and damned if they don't. Maybe so. But those whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad.
Update: The Virginia General Assembly has voted 80-17 to block ObamaCare. The measure has already passed the Senate, and the Governor promises to sign it. Of course, none of this matters. Nullification doesn't work. But it is some indication of the state of things that 21 of 39 Democrats voted in favor of it.
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