You are here: Home » Opinions

You Be the Judge: How will the health care bill affect future elections?

By Gaveliers, The Gavel Media Team, on April 4, 2010 10:46 PM

Christopher Fegan & Jamie Zhang -

Christopher Fegan:

The passage of the health care bill is being lauded as a major policy victory for President Barack Obama. Reform of the health care system was one of the President’s major initiatives upon entering office, and this bill represents the largest delivery of his campaign promises. As the dust settles on this historic legislation, however, we must ask at what cost Obama gained the reform he desired.

Conservative pundits swear that this legislation will shift control of Congress to Republicans in 2010 and ultimately lose Obama the presidency in 2012. While these two scenarios are highly unlikely, there is a good chance that Obama could be hurt by voter backlash. The congressional elections this November will be the first major reaction to Obama’s plan for reform. Unfortunately for the President, early trends show that his party is likely to lose multiple seats. Outgoing Democrats, especially in the Senate, are liable to be replaced by Republican challengers – even in states like Nevada and Indiana. The potential loss of so many veteran Democratic leaders, including Harry Reid and Chris Dodd, could throw the party into a vacuum of coherence. At the very least, Obama will be faced with the task of reorganizing his constituency to more effectively achieve his policy goals. Any mishaps in this process could be deeply problematic for the Democrats – after all, this is the party that almost failed to pass healthcare with a supermajority.

Early predictions also indicate that Obama will almost certainly lose his near-supermajority in the Senate. Even if the Democrats maintain their majority standing (and they probably will), the loss of this luxury could prove to be a major hindrance for the President. The health care debate saw the Republicans block together to vote against nearly any proposal Obama crafted. Be it right or wrong, this bitter partisanship is likely to hold over in the next Congress. This means that gaining even one or two Republican votes could prove very difficult, and the passage of even relatively simple legislation could become a hassle.

Such a scenario could have major repercussions for Obama in the 2012 election. Washington has been enveloped in deep and bitter partisanship since the health care bill was first proposed. If this toxic political climate persists, Obama could very well be left with the health care bill as centerpiece of his reelection campaign. That could be quite problematic. Most Republicans will predictably vote against Obama; most Democrats will vote for him. The problem for the President will be convincing independents and moderates that the health care bill was enough to warrant four more years in office.

The key word in the situation is uncertainty. Obama’s prime project has tremendous upside, but it is also steeped with uncertainty. Will this nearly-trillion dollar plan actually make things better over the course of ten years? Can we really afford to pay for it? How will hospitals respond? What does this bill actually mean for the country? Obama will be banking his campaign on his passage of a bill that elicits such massive questions. This could be a serious problem indeed.

As such, Obama will likely need to accomplish other policy goals to give voters a clear set of reasons to cast their ballot for him. If he cannot pass any additional meaningful legislation, it’s questionable whether the health bill will be enough to convince moderates to give him another chance. Again, the fact that Republicans are effectively voting to block him means it’s quite possible that little more will be accomplished.

It ultimately comes down to what Obama chooses to focus on in the next year and a half before he has to hit the campaign trail. He needs to emphasize the immediate benefits of the health bill to the extent that voters believe it warrants him another term. Even this task, however, is an uphill climb. A March 29 Rasmussen Report has 54 percent of voters desiring a repeal of the health care bill, with 44 percent strongly disapproving of Obama’s presidency against 30 percent strongly approving. Time and action will tell if these numbers persist. But if Obama does lose reelection in 2012 due to bipartisan inaction and political stagnancy, the health care bill will go down as the primary cause.

Jamie Zhang:

“If we’re able to stop Obama on this it will be his Waterloo. It will break him.” So claimed Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), referring to the health care bill which, in July of the past year, seemed anything but certain to pass. Republicans reasoned that by stopping the Obama administration on health care, they would effectively take away all initiative from the Democratic agenda.

Well, looks like that didn’t happen.

Instead, President Barack Obama, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, et al were able to pass comprehensive health care reform on a historic scale, giving access to health care to tens of millions more Americans, without a single vote from GOP members of Congress. So what does this mean for Obama and the Democrats politically?

First, it shows beyond all doubt that the Democrats can actually accomplish something, not just in the eyes of the public, but also in their own eyes. For over 70 years, since FDR’s presidency, universal health care has been the unobtainable Holy Grail of policies, an ideal to which Democrat presidents from Truman to Clinton have strived but ultimately failed to obtain. Though the new legislation still fails to cover every person, it dramatically expands coverage and protects those who need insurance the most—those with “pre-existing conditions” and least able to afford necessary care.

Opponents of Obama point to his approval ratings (currently around 50 percent) and attribute his supposed drop in popularity to his support for health care. Yet the current approval ratings for Republicans in Congress make Obama’s seem astronomically high by comparison. According to the recent Research 2000 Poll, being the party of NO and tea partiers earns you approval from a mere 21 percent of Americans. Even George Bush, at the nadir of his popularity, was more well-liked than that.

Republicans who were most visibly against health care fared even worse than their GOP colleagues. John Boehner, leader of Republicans in the House, has only a 17 percent approval rating, losing 5 percent since the passage of health care reform. Meanwhile, Pelosi, who guided the bill through the House, reaped a 3 point jump in her popularity, which, at 39 percent, is more than twice that of Boehner. Most of these changes in approval ratings reflect the respective disappointment and euphoria from the parties’ bases. For a Democratic Party desperately in need of something to be excited about, this was, as Vice President Joe Biden put succinctly, “a big f*cking deal.”

If there is one certainty about American politics, it’s that voters like leaders who lead. For far too long, it seems, Democrats have forgotten this axiom and allowed themselves to be bullied by Republicans, shooting themselves in the foot from time to time. By passing the health care bill, Democrats have proven themselves to be a party of ideas, one that is not reactionary but rather proactive, willing to take chances to accomplish what they believe in.

Throughout the past year, while some Republicans were talking of Waterloo and trying to tie Obama to the likes of Hitler and Stalin, Democrats were out explaining why health care reform was so crucial to the long-term viability of the American economy. In this sense, Democrats appear to be the “grown-ups” in national politics, while Republicans seem ever more erratic and extreme in their politicking—a trend reflected in the national approval numbers for the parties, where Democrats have a 12-point edge over Republicans.

Finally, it is impossible to evaluate the current political situation in a vacuum. For comparison, just imagine how disillusioned and weak the Democrats would have been had the GOP succeeded in blocking President Obama’s single most important legislation, one upon which he has staked virtually all of his political capital. By passing health care reform, Democrats can claim a legislative victory and campaign for the midterm elections without having their tail between their legs. As for Republicans who plan on campaigning on a platform of repealing the health care bill, Obama perhaps put it best when he responded at a rally, “Bring It On!”

Yet for all this talk of political ramifications, history will judge our legislators not for the politics of health care reform, but rather for the impact their achievements will have on our fellow Americans. In the long run, it matters not whether certain politicians received temporary boosts in popularity numbers. What truly matters is whether our representatives in the highest legislative body in the land acted in the nation’s best interest and whether the next generation will find itself better off than this one.