Political scientists Jacob Hacker and Dan Hopkins have an op-ed in today’s Washington Post entitled “After Massachusetts, why the Democrats should still pass health-care reform.” They advocate the strategy Erik mentions below (i.e., the House passes the Senate bill). Find their piece here.
My only qualm involves this claim:
Those disenchanted liberals are not going to vote for Republicans. They might stay home if Democrats do not remind them that they want to do more on health care down the road. But they are much more likely to stay home if a bill doesn’t pass.
After the failure of the Clinton health care plan, it didn’t appear that Democrats were demobilized. That doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen in 2010, but I think it’s safer to bet that committed liberals—already likely voters to being with—can be mobilized via other means, even if health care reform fails again.
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Thanks John. I was wondering why the post-mortems I was reading didn’t mention this option. Jacob and Dan are smart and sensible as always.
Passing the Senate bill would require the House to accept the Senate’s language on abortion. Democrats like Bart Stupak, Dan Lipinski, and Gene Taylor have, in recent weeks, been reaffirming their opposition to this language. In Stupak’s words, the final language “has to be pretty close to Stupak language or it’s not going to fly. I can go back to my district [on some issues] and say I did the best I could, I tried. But on abortion you can’t go back and say, I used to be right to life; now I’m pro-choice. That doesn’t work; it’s either or.”
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