Why August Wasn’t Apocalyptic for Health Care Reform

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http://thefastertimes.com/healthcare/2009/09/01/why-august-wasnt-apocalyptic-for-health-care-reform/

Why August Wasn’t Apocalyptic for Health Care Reform
Niko Karvounis
September 1, 2009

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It’s true that Obama had a rough August. His approval ratings hit a new low of 51 percent last week, even as people cared more and more about health care reform–surely a bad sign. Right-wing nutjobs are taking the opportunity to proclaim the start of a conservative counter-revolution, and some pundits are predicting massive Democratic losses in the fall elections because “the situation this summer has slipped completely out of control for President Obama and Congressional Democrats.”

Seems dire. But let’s just breathe for a moment, people.

Yes, August was a loser for Obama and the Dems. But we knew it was going to be! When Congress went on recess in early August, we knew that we wouldn’t be seeing any official progress on reform over the rest of the month. True, we didn’t know that there would be so many town hall protesters stirring @#$%*& up, and we didn’t know for sure that Obama’s poll numbers would drop. But all in all, we knew that it would be a month of uncertainty: of stalled progress, tentative exploration of the issue by ambivalent legislators assessing their options, and a general silence on the part of reform’s most vocal institutional advocates (i.e. the White House and progressive Democrats). In such times of uncertainty, anxiety reigns–it’s just the nature of politics and of people. A lull in forward momentum or reassuring messages on important issues leaves more time to get distracted by fear-mongering and socialism-baiting.

Obviously, it would have been ideal for the Democrats and Obama to have had a pain-free August (assuming that you’re for health care reform, that is). In a perfect world, the public would have waited patiently throughout the month, engaging in rational and fair deliberations, and getting up to speed on the issue in order to ensure a more productive, consensus-driven Round 2 in the fall. But we don’t live in a perfect world. We have people like Glenn Beck on this planet. Sorry.

To review: Did August suck for Obama, Democrats, and other advocates of health care reform? Yes. Did we know it was going to suck? Yep. Did it suck a little bit more than we were hoping? Of course. Is it impossible to recover from three bad weeks–weeks in which reform-minded Democrats were actually unable to do much to press their case to the public? Of course not. It’s easy to say that Democrats let the health care situation spin out of control in August–they actually couldn’t complete any official business for the entire month. And we knew that already!

August could have gone better for health care reform, but media sharks looking for a harbinger of Democratic apocalypse need to chill. We’ve got a long way to go. Wake me up when September begins; then we can talk.