These calls for a do-over/re-start and threats to obstruct and delay are part of a long-standing strategy by the GOP to kill health insurance reform and to re-animate their own political future, and according to the polls it might be working. We're seeing slipping numbers for Democrats up and down the ticket for 2010. And, I'm guessing Republicans are walking with a spring-in-their-collective-step hoping to turn 2010 into a 1994 redo.
Truth is no one sees 2010 getting as bloody for Dems as 1994 (when they lost 54 seats), however, many a prognosticator has gleaned an upcoming route by Republicans from their chicken bones and tarot cards. Republicans have found their rallying cry, and you can hear the bellowing begin.
What is important to remember is that in 1994 you had low turnout (as you might expect from a mid-term election), but an energized right (fighting the illegitimate Clinton Administration) and a scared geriatric crowd (Hillarycare and all that) voted in large numbers while a demoralized Left/Center-Left stayed home, depressed by President Clinton's NAFTA policy and his failure to reform health care. To quote a previous entry...
First, let's get one thing straight, 1994 was not a revolution. The midterm elections saw a paltry 38.8% nationwide turnout, and the Republicans only received 19% of the eligible vote. The number of Dems voting declined across much of the nation, while Republican turnout increased. The nation saw a 21% drop in the reported participation rates of those with incomes of $15,000 and lower, while there was a 33% increase in the share of the vote cast by those whose incomes were $50,000 and over. African Americans turnout saw a decline of 2 percentage points and turnout among young people declined to 14.5% of eligible voters. And men only slightly increased their share of the electorate (disproving the "angry white guy" myth). The 54 seat pickup for Republicans in the House and 8 seat pickup in the Senate has been seen as the culmination of a decades long realignment in the states of the old Confederacy. Even as Democrats had a significant registration advantage (37.8% to 22.4%) the region had been voting for Republican Presidential candidates since Nixon. This "realignment" has often been cast as a revolt at the base of the Democratic Party because of the "race issue," i.e. the Democratic support of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act which essentially destroyed much of the legal infrastructure of Jim Crow. This "southern strategy" mythology has been widely discredited, in fact there was little or no significant shift at the bottom rungs of the socio-economic ladder from support for the Dems to the GOP. Once again, the myth of the disaffected, poor, angry white man was true in anecdote only. The real "realignment" happened much further up the economic ladder. Which makes it not much of a realignment since Americans with upper incomes typically vote Republican. The depressed turnout among Democratic loyalists (the poor, the young, and black folks) accounts for the 1994 turnout.
That said, there is a lesson to be learned here, but it's not what David Brooks or Sen. Mitch McConnell says it is, the real danger is not in promoting a government take over of health care, the real danger is in NOT PASSING REAL REFORM. The right is energized, grandma and grandpa are scared, this was always going to happen. The Right, as Kevin Drum wrote today, authorized a 'scorched earth counterattack to Obama's entire agenda.' They lied. And, as the Wire reminds us, the bigger the lie the more they believe it. The real test for President Obama is whether he'll be able to stand up and energize the Left by actually passing reform, and whether he can win back Independents by not giving in to the craziness of either side and pass reform that doesn't smell of ideology or capitulation. He won't have much help from the grassroots. The grassroots has had a hard time getting energized, because the President has been so far removed from the process, because the process is complicated (five bills, each of which is hundreds of pages) and because we have a mainstream media that reports process and conflict, not substance and nuance (see the WaPo Ombudsman's column from this Sunday) resulting in a population that just doesn't understand the legislation. In retrospect, The grassroots should have been energized for a single payer option by the unions and MoveOn.org, which would have created a pressure from the Left that would have made the 'public option' the sensible compromise that it is, and not the baby in the bathwater for the Left.
The point is, the Right doesn't want a do-over they want a redo, a redo of 1994. If all those Democratic Congressmen want to win, they need to pass health insurance reform. Energize the Left for once. It's time to dance with the one that brought you and pass reform. Do it like you mean it, Mr. President, and maybe the Left won't stay home in 2010. And show some leadership by standing firm to both sides and maybe some of those independents will remember what they liked about you in the first place.
No comments:
Post a Comment