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Voting for the new health care law was extremely damaging to Democrats’ re-election prospects in 2010 according an analysis by Seth Masket and Steve Greene. From Enik Rising:
For the paper, we look at the impact of four roll call votes: health reform, the stimulus, cap-and-trade, and the TARP bailout from 2008. We find that a vote for health reform was very costly for Democrats, reducing reelection margins by six to eight percentage points. This cost at least thirteen House Democrats their jobs. We find a smaller, but still statistically significant, effect for supporting TARP. The stimulus has a mixed effect, harming Democrats in more conservative districts but possibly helping them in more liberal ones. We found no overall effect for cap-and-trade.
That is a huge impact. So, without this really bad health care bill, Republicans would control the House by roughly a 229-206 margin. A rather minor deficit that would make Democrats chances of taking back the House in 2012 a far more likely prospect.
If only there had been a high-profile website on the left that tried diligently to warn Democrats what a politically toxic event their corporatist sellouts had made a vote for health care reform. A website that even went so far as to pay for polling on the bill in swing districts to prove what a political millstone it had become, and tease out some progressive changes that might salvage it. Although, I guess, such a useful warning wouldn’t have much value if it were subject to several disingenuous attacks by supporters of the law.
Despite fairly clear evidence to the contrary, you had Bill Clinton, Rahm Emanuel, and several liberal writers working to convince Congressional Democrats that, after voting for high-profile and highly unpopular legislation, it would magically become popular soon after passage.
In the future, the health care debate will become a fascinating case study in groupthink. An interesting look at how Republicans were able to get their base so incredibly angry at what was fundamentally a revised version of an old Republican health care plan, and how almost the entire professional Democratic political class was able to delude itself about the politics of the bill.
69 Comments
Let them enjoy their millstone. They only have themselves to blame.
health care reform??? Please, call it what it is, the health insurance benefit plan.
And sorry for the repitition, but this thread it is definitely relevant.
And now I can’t wait to see how these same Democrats that voted for Obamacare, which provides subsidies to people to purchase health insurance on the private market, oppose the Republican plans for Medicare, which will provide subsidies to the elderly to purchase health insurance on the private market.
Can’t wait to hear them explain why this R plan is soooo bad when it is basically extending Obamacare to the seniors.
Pass the popcorn.
let me correct something for you jon;
voting for obama’s corporate health care plan was bad for electoral health, if they voted the public option and competition among drug companies they would have won in land slides
obama wrecked this crew with his republican agenda
And you mentioned group think, that worked on this side too.
I mentioned the Democrats that voted for Obamacare above, but what about all the members of the veal pen that fell in line with this basically republican plan??
And how long do you think it will be before those same veal pen members, who said what a great idea it was to provide subsidies to people to buy private insurance are going to start saying what a bad idea it is for our poor seniors to be given subsidies and forced to purchase private insurance.
That group think thing worked and still works both ways, as you said.
Funny ain’t it? (snicker)
Just like Medicare D plans under Bush. It was taken out of the social insurance system and handed over to the insurance industry on the meme that it would cost less.
I’m sure you could ask anyone that lived through that change and experienced donut holes while paying more each month to a insurance company how well the repug plan works.
what obama produced was NOT health care “reform” it was health industry gifts, taking middle class assets and giving it to the wealthiest corporations on the planet, removing competition and giving them free reign to charge whatever they wanted
obama is to blame, not health care reform which we have not seen yet
the democrats can save themselves if they re-write obama-care with a progressive program and let teh repukes vote against it
that is teh way they can regain some ground
go against the corporatist in chief, field a progressive instead and bing, they will be back in business
Oh, they won’t have too much trouble if they bother to try. It seems many Americans prefer a good con job instead of the truth these days.
Funny this:
“was fundamentally a revised version of an old Republican health care plan”
Republican
piss ontrickle down policies are so good for us.I would really love seeing some democrats start telling obama like it is, that he is a corporatist and they do NOT support him, that if given the chance they would vote NO CONFIDENCE and FORCE him off the ticket
this man has been a worse disaster then bush, the previous worst president in our history
I saw a sign a while back with bush’s picture asking “miss me yet?”
yes, if he tried doing what obama is doing the democrats would be screaming high hell and there would be republican prices paid, instead there are democrat prices paid and we get far worse agenda rammed down our throat then bush could have ever EVER accomplished with our majorities
yes, I miss bush
No kidding. The “fucking retarded” liberals certainly aren’t responsible for that atrocity of a health care bill, they got told to go piss up a rope in no uncertain terms early on in the process. President Prettywords was busy shrewdly chasing Olympia Snowe’s ever-moving target and lavishing praise on Max Baucus, who has his ass stuffed full of dollars from the health insurance lobby.
Playing the devil’s advocate…
Obamacare = step up.
Going from nothing to something that is (arguably) better then nothing.
Republican Plan = step down.
Going from full single payer to something that is (arguably) better then nothing.
Hey, Jon: In comments at Enik Rising, I was asked for links to posts backing my assertion earlier today that
I provided these links, but you may have better ones to add over there:
Arkansas-02:
http://elections.firedoglake.com/surveyusafiredoglake-poll-ar-02/
Ohio-01:
http://elections.firedoglake.com/surveyusafiredoglake-poll-oh-01/
New York-01:
http://www.surveyusa.com/client/PollReport.aspx?g=02b53979-1e5f-47fc-82e1-64b0fb96602e&c=158
How to save House seats:
http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2010/01/25/%E2%80%9Csome-elements-of-the-bill-are-popular%E2%80%9D-the-foolish-mantra-that-won%E2%80%99t-save-house-democrats/
Also:
http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2010/01/20/public-option-popular-individual-mandate-unpopular-bill-with-mandate-and-no-public-option-unpopular/
http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2009/12/10/dont-be-shocked-when-the-democratic-base-does-not-turn-out-in-2010/
I mean, really. Where did everyone think the trickle was coming from? What else ever tricked from the obscenely wealthy?
It’s literally “piss on the people.”
I’ll bet there were a lot of hearty laughs within the Reagan administration when one of them came up with that line.
I’m not impressed. I’ll buy the step down for seniors, but not the step up.
Obamacare will affect EVERYONE (not just those that are currently uninsured) and as such, IMO, will NOT be a step up. Many of those currently WITH insurance are going to see their level of coverage go DOWN DOWN DOWN DOWN DOWN, not up. In fact, I believe more people will suffer under less coverage than will gain in new coverage (from nothing).
YMMV since this doesn’t start until 2014, but IMO the way that set it up some employers are going to stop covering completely and others are going to reduce the level of coverage. Not a step up for those folks.
Not to mention the comments in many, many articles. There were people who once supported it chiming in on what a disaster the final version became and how it wasn’t at all what they expected and that was going to influence the turnout and hence the vote.
Many Dems failed to listen.
I don’t believe the “step up” either that is why I put “arguably.”
Just guessing at the arguments that will be made.
Well, yes.
I was asked for links over at Enik Rising, though.
LOL, I doubt they’ll make any arguments.
I doubt they’ll ever address the similarity of Obamacare to the R plans for Medicare, and it conveniently won’t ever occur to the fine journalists of this land to ask any pol.
Would love to hear just one Dem pol or apologist try though. That’d be worth a bag or two of popcorn.
Leveraged economic servitude of the consumer/taxpayer/governed to the likes of BCBS, A PUBLIC CHARITY(?) under fear of a coerced punitive tax penalty. Meanwhile BCBS MA provides an eleven million dollar “chute ride ” to a corporate executive? Talking about corporate sodomy! Real charitable I guess? Time to get my sphincter checked. That is if I have one, to check?
It’s not as if the House didn’t have options.
Anyone recall HR 636?
From the comment thread there:
There definitely were options.
Yep. bush was really bad, but now we have the great pretender who is far worse than bush. The hypocrisy of the democrats has been on full display since obama was elected. Just watch what happens with social security.
Just wanted a Republican to blame for all the compromises he was “forced” to make.
Hey OFG. Incoming email.
Oops. My bad. Jumping to conclusions again.
Though there have been such statements made about FDL and I believe I just got a tad defensive, having suffered a few. After all, it was FDL that helped a lot of us wade through the b.s. to get to the facts about HCR and it’s just incredibly disingenuous of some to imagine otherwise.
Enik Rising? As in http://enikrising.blogspot.com/?
How many of the Ds who didn’t get reelected are now working or lobbying for med inc corps & PhRMA?
You’re probably right. I really don’t care about it though, beyond how hilarious it was (if it weren’t so pathetic) to have watched Obama crawling around asking Republicans how high they would let him jump, after Bush did whatever he wanted and ran the country into the ground with much smaller majorities, and often didn’t even have a majority of Republicans in Congress while doing so.
I could give a shit why Obama does what he does, I care about what he does.
…voting for obama’s corporate health care plan was bad for electoral health, if they voted the public option and competition among drug companies they would have won in landslides.
Absotively posilutely.
Knowing why he does stuff makes it easier to figure out what he will do. Knowing that he was shilling for corp PhRMA and med ins made it easy to figure out the shape of HCR.
By now, O’s record is long enough & consistent enough that the why is pretty obvious. But earlier is was very useful to know.
Yep – one’s ear hearing for one’s self in the enemy camp, so to say, is useful; at least for mitigation/avoidance strategies.
As is often said, forewarned is forearmed.
Goodgreat question.Boy, if there were a website like that, I’d go there every day. I’d pay $45 a year to be a member, and I’d use it as a political clubhouse and base for activism.
So where can I find such a website? Oh, if only it existed…
[/irony leavened with benign snark]
The best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour. We see the neoliberal agenda and I don’t think any of us here like it.
Heh.
Except when eleven dimension chess is at play. /s
Having seen Obama play it for the last 2 years I think I can see more moves in advance than I can in regular chess. The neoliberal end game is not hard to figure out.
Hi. Jumping in tonight. It was difficult watching Max Baucus ram things through on HCR. Obama was worthless then. He lost a second vote from me. I was so duped by the “change” thing. Frenemy comes to mind when I think of Bill C. and BHO.
Unfortunately, it is not.
Getting people to realize where it’s going is the hard part. Both Ds and Rs are working toward the same goal – the privatization of most services provided by local, state and federal govt. Profit over people. The Rs are blatant about it and the Ds say they made us do it.
Frenemy goes back to 1953, according to wiki.
I originally heard it in the context of a friend pretending to be an enemy, for P.R. purposes. It was used as a plot twist in a CSI-Miami episode. But I see from the wiki that it can be used either way.
One of the guests at dinner last night is an Obamabot, who thinks he’s doing everything just right. He, the dinner guest, claims that he & I agreed to not talk about it one the occasion of the first time we met, at a large Xmas party. I don’t remember any such promise, but dropped the discussion in the interest of social harmony. He is in his 70s, career was with CBS, and is quite savvy on many subjects. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to engage him more thoroughly at some future time. But he’s clearly in the ‘fooled’ category.
Ditto, that. A lot of people were deceived as to his intentions once in office.
Myself included.
It is amazing how money can blind one to the cliff they are rapidly
approachingfalling off.Wait… You make $45/year?
I wasn’t aware the wealthy were posting here. /s
MSNBC ran the film on Obama showing him saying he would put on shoes..walk with union protesters…bla bla. President Obama never came back to clarify nor cared to lie himself a second time out of that original campaign lie. Why have presidential campaigns if much of the stumping contains lies? Just see who weighs less or who has better teeth. Then the 24 year reign will roll into a 28 year reign of whatever. Someone wrote here a while ago what the next step after democracy was, but I forgot. It didn’t seem as though the next step went upward for citizens.
Hey is it essential the same as the Neocons? Servitude? Convergence as the political elites all pay homage to that corporate *ock?
The Dems lost me when they renewed the PATRIOT Act. Twice.
Passing RomneyCare–uh, I mean ObamaCare–was just another nail in the coffin.
I backed Obama in the primaries because I didn’t want to have Clinton’s third term.
Turns out that’s what we got anyway. (sigh)
No we didn’t, we got Bush’s third term-only more so.
This is why an unknown black guy was chosen by Brzezinski and the boys at CFR to become president because a black Democrat can do more damage to the old Democratic base without paying for it at all, and there will still be people like Markos who support him.
The Dems voted for a garbage insurance plan and they’re surprised someone noticed?
Jeez I hope Lynn Woolsey loses.
You can afford popcorn?
Support at DKos is slipping–badly and quite openly. I knew they’d catch on. The to-the-death supporters are always in the trenches for some fool or other and there’s no cutting thru that kind of obsessional haze, but people with any sense at all will come around eventually. Often when the piper’s bill arrives. If McCain would have been worse, that’s pure speculation, while the reality of Obama’s covenant with prevailing power and money is horrendous.
The worse of two worlds: the bottoms of the Clinton and Bush barrels.
The Dimocrat’s electoral chances were ravaged by their own direct, stubborn efforts to deliberately ignore their base in favor of yet MORE corporate welfare for their Big Pharma campaign donors. And since they’ve been doing precious little else in the intervening time, it’s looking as bad or worse for them in 2012.
Clearly, they don’t understand that the more they tell us “Let them eat cake!” the more it will be told to them come election day. I voted for Obama in the last election, but I would LOVE to see him get primary’d by an actual Progressive candidate. Can you imagine the debates? He’d get hosed with almost no effort.
I’m not going to defend the Affordable Healthcare Act, it was written by a Wellpoint lobbyist for the benefit of the health insurance monopoly. But this article is completely wrong about the consequences of voting for it. Voting against the Affordable Healthcare Act was suicide.
Thirty-nine House Democrats voted against health care reform; twenty seven of them lost. House Democrats who distanced themselves from the party by bashing Nancy Pelosi all lost. Almost every House Democrat who voted against unemployment benefit extensions lost.
Hear, frickin HEAR! But Obama and the rest of the Dem leadership didn’t want actual health care reform in the first place.
All of the people on here yelling about how Obama is the major disappointment in their life and how he is personally and the only one responsible for every single thing that has gone wrong for the last two years – you all make me ill.
He is one guy. He is not god. He cannot do anything by himself. He told us that. He said he needed our help. Did he get it? No. We all sat back and waited for magic change to drop out of the sky like fairy dust. He not only was battling the entrenched just-say-no Rethugs in Congress at every turn, but the Blue Dogs and the Conserva-Dems so his so-called filibuster-proof majority in the Senate never existed except in some faraway dream land.
On top of that, how many of you remember the stories about the “burrowed” bureaucrats that Bush managed to get entrenched into every single agency? It’s awfully hard to get any policies implemented when a) the agencies have no heads because you can’t get them confirmed by the Senate; and b) the bureaucrats in charge are burrowed moles from the previous administration who are there to make sure that nothing you do will succeed.
Did he make bad decisions? Sure. He is a human. Way too many people put their aspirations and expectations on him. They made him out to be something he never was and never claimed to be. But some of the failure is ours collectively as well.
And as to why the Democrats lost? Well you can parse it this way and that but the real reason is because the Democratic voters stayed home. Because they were “disappointed”. So the Rethugs won. And that’s Obama’s fault too. His fault, completely, totally, personally. None of the rest of us have any responsibility for that at all. Nope.
So now we are all collectively going to jump ship. To what? I heard stupid Howard Fineman tonight discussing how Michele Bachmann could be a viable candidate…..yeah right.
There were a large number of seats held by republicans for years in the northeast west, and midwest that democrats took in 2006 and 2008. In 2010 republicans in theory should have taken those same seats back. In most cases they didn’t. The republicans actually defeated a bunch of long term southern democrats. In AZ, NM, IN, PN, MD, CT, and NY democrats have more seats now than they had in 2003 when there were more democrats in the house. On the other hand they have less seats in MS, AL, GA, AR, LA, SC, and TX than they have ever had. This has less to do with health care (it is a shitty bill, but you have to be able to read to know that, so we can assume southerners don’t know that) and more to do with southerners purging the party that elected the first black president.
No one expected Obama to part the sea. They did expect him to give a shit about the people he purported to represent.
Not put Jeff Immelt on the jobs panel, Alan Simpson on the deficit commission, and meet Billy Tauzin the pharmaceutical lobbyist in the White House to cut a deal to sell out drug reimportation and Medicare negotiation during his opaque health care “negotiations” – after he ran ads against Bush for a year for doing exactly the same thing. And not triple the waste of life and money in Afghanistan.
All Obama had to do to get rid of the Bush tax cuts was not to do anything. He didn’t need a single fucking vote from Congress. Can we hold him responsible for not managing to do that?
snOwbama’s behavior concerning the health care bill and what we were stuck with for our work to get him elected has changed my opinion of him for life. There is pretty much nothing he can do to redeem himself after showing what an out right liar he is. Then the austerity stuff on top of letting the banks devastate people and the economy. How anyone could vote for him again is beyond me. A vote for him is a vote for the Banking industry and Wall street and War, and torture. Basically everything he said he was against.
Im done voting for Dems for the rest of my life. Im voting Green and Im not listening to the campaign “rhetoric” which apparently means to the likes of Obama that he can say anything it takes to get elected and then do the exact opposite and serve the people he promised to reign in.
Won’t Get Fooled Again
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHhrZgojY1Q
Liberal voters and true Dems have no where to go but Green.
They have Cadillac care for life. What happens to the peasants is nothing but an abstraction to them. They didn’t care then and they don’t care now. That’s why Im voting Green and not for the phony two headed party serving the top 400. Been there, done that, and Im done.
you are totally behind the curve and are completely unaware of what transpired during the health care debate that has made so many so mad. You are towing the phony fake propaganda that Obama didn’t work against the health care promises he campaigned on. Either you are trying to promote a false history or you’re just plain ignorant.
Here is post written by someone who was keeping up . It was written about white washing the true history of the health care debate. It pretty much covers it.
shootthatarrow April 1st, 2011 at 9:11 pm
Obama WH rushed HCR into 2009 despite the complexity and politically slippery terrain any American HC regime change(s) would entail.
Barack Obama then played Hands Off while also doing backroom HCR deals or placing whatever deals he had made with campaign funders/donors during the 2008 WH election cycle.
Max Baucus did months of Slow Walk HCR while Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi and the D Party run Congress did Extended Kabuki Stage Play and framed and reframed HCR scope and width. In ways that–
>> shucked single payer ideas
>> shucked PO ideas
>> derailed actual reform of what AHIP,PhARMA and allied HMO/HC industry interests represent in American For Profit based health and sick care regimes.
>> employer based health care/sick care still largely left in the mix despite the well known gatekeeper shortfalls of access to/delivery of affordable healthcare security this presents for jobless,job changing,unemployed,underemployed,at risk health history,higher aged or disabled/at risk mental health history Americans.
Some “reform” of the American health care regime. Time to call BullShit.
The R Party? Has gone to Crazy Town. Often does Crazy really well.
The D Party? It went to Sell Out City. Seems to do Sell Out really well.
POTUS Barack Obama? He’s the Mayor of D Party Sell Out City.
HCR just had to “get done” in 2009 the Obama WH told Americans — yet so much of this so called HCR that is now law has to reach 2014? 2017? — before coming into force. WTH?
The pro AHIP mandated Buy/Join feature of ObamaCare? Barack Obama did get that done — Buy In/Join Up Mandate of ObamaCare a very profitable upside for Big Five American health insurance players — Aetna,Cigna,United Health,WellPoint and Humana.
Obama derailed any Single Payer Plan/Medicare For All Plan very early on and sabotaged any viable PO ideas early and often during 2009/early 2010.
AHIP Forced Buy/Join/Pay Mandate? In.
Single Payer/Medicare For All/PO? Out.
This is what Barack Obama and his D Party delivered as HCR in early 2010.
Barack Obama owns it. The D Party owns it.
Now own the consequence spectrum of it too.
and how almost the entire professional Democratic political class was able to delude itself about the politics of the bill.
led by the deluder-in-chief obama.
Agreed.
Hey, it could be worse, right?lol (obama’s 2012 election slogan w/o lol)
So if they didn’t pass Obama’s bad bill, a Republican bill was going to pass?
Let’s have a link for that one please.
On this thread we’re discussing some polling, a study, and how they relate to the health care bill. If you’d like to contribute to a “how Obama is better than Michelle Bachman” conversation, there are many to be found.