“We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”

[babylonsister]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-07-20/the-health-care-wimps/full/


The Health-Care Wimps

by Eric Alterman

Obama may be impervious to the demons of 1994, but his party is still haunted by the failure of Hillarycare. Eric Alterman on why the Democrats need conquer their fear to win this health-care battle.



What is the problem with the Democrats? Why, with a commanding majority in the House and a fillibuster-proof 60 seats in the Senate, are they unable to make good on the Obama administration’s central political priority: a new, universal health-care system for the nation, something Democrats have been trying and failing to pass since Harry Truman proposed one in 1948?

Well, any question that begins with the phrase “What’s wrong with the Democrats…” tends to have multiple and overlapping responses. But in this case, most of them can be summed up in a single word: “fear.” Democrats fear 1994, when popular discontent with the Clinton administration, symbolized by “Hillarycare,” led to catastrophe in the midterm elections. Those who lost their seats were almost all among the most vulnerable Democrats from red or purple states—of the kind who managed to squeak out victories in 2008. Hence the Republican focus in their attacks on the districts of moderate Democrats.

snip//

Before anyone embraces the 1994 paradigm too closely, it behooves us to remember what a different Republican Party Clinton was facing then, compared with today’s leaderless, headless body. That was a party on the ascendancy with fresh leadership; this is party of Sarah Palin and Michael Steele.

What’s more, as Gary Jacobson writes, it is a mistake to tie the Democrats’ 1994 debacle too closely to the failure of their health-care plans. Rather, as in 1992, it was “the economy, stupid.” Back then, he explains, “79 percent of the voters in the national exit poll thought the economy was in bad shape, and 62 percent of them voted for a Democrat for the House. In 1994, 75 percent said they were no better off financially than they had been two years ago; 57 percent thought the economy was still in bad shape, and 62 percent of this group voted for the Republican.”

Another major difference was money. Clinton succeeded in raising mounds of cash for his own re-election efforts, but the congressional cash committees went begging. Today, the DCCC has already doubled the NRCC in fundraising, with more on the way, as more of Obama’s time is freed up to help those who helped him.

It would be unfair and untrue to insist that conservative and moderate Democrats have nothing to fear but fear itself. 2010 could be a tough year for the Democrats if the economy does not improve. But they will not even have a life raft upon which to cling if this administration is perceived to have failed as thoroughly as Bill Clinton did in his first two years.

As Ben Franklin said of an earlier, far more demanding struggle, “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.” Voters will stick with Democrats if they think they are winners, not whiners. For their own good, as well as the administration’s, it’s up to Obama to convince the party’s fence-waverers of that truism by whatever means necessary.

[BlooInBloo]

1. I think/hope the shitty Democratic senators will in the end dance with the guy what brought 'em...

I think/hope they'll recognize that if they don't, they won't have a ride home.

[Captain Hilts]

2. Love this. nt

[John Q. Citizen]

3. That whole article by Eric Alterman is a lie. If he would bother to actually

compare the vote in 1990 (the mid term before 1994) and 1994 he would see the Republicans votes in about the same numbers. The salient feature of the 1994 mid terms was that Democrats voted in much smaller numbers in 1994 than tghey did in 1990.

This was a direct result of the rightword move of Clinton ala both NAFTA and healthcare. Hillary's bill, written in secret with hand picked members of her commission, which included the largest insurance companies, did nothing at all to excite the left.

it was the left who stayed home in 1994, because when Democrats talk and act like Republicans nobody wants to get up and go vote for them.

[xchrom]

4. interesting that w only got crickets after your comment. nt

[John Q. Citizen]

5. People prefer to exist in perception based reality than in fact based reality

they like stories that reinforce there perception, and they prefer to ignore occurrences of fact that counter their personal perceptions.

In this case, even if someone googled the facts and said, "Wow, that's true, it was the discouraged Dems that stayed home, not the Repos who turned out that turned over the house to the Repos,' then it entails admitting that the facts don't liner up with their perceptions. It also challenges their assumptions about the current administration. They don't want to admit that the more Obama acts like a Repo the more he is hurt politically. They prefer an outside agent be responsible for Obamas problems instead of admitting he should quit moving to the right.

In fact they don't want to perceive that Obama is moving to the right in the first place. If they do perceive it they instead would prefer to call it "chess," instead of "sell out."

Denial is a powerful thing.