Triumph or Death March?

The Democrats are pulling out all the stops. They will pass health care reform on Christmas Eve, even if they have to bribe the hold-outs with $100 million grants to their states. Currently the public is against the bill and it will be passed on a party-line vote so there is no cover for Democrats. Why are they pushing so hard to pass something so unpopular?

Rush Limbaugh thinks that the issue is so important to the Democrats that they are willing to sacrifice their Congressional majority for it. I disagree.

If you ask me why the Democrats lost their majority in 1994, I would point out that there were several factors. Gun owners were upset about anti-gun legislation and were organized. The population was outraged by Congressional scandals. Clinton ran on tax cuts but raised taxes instead.

If you ask Bill Clinton why he lost Congress, he will tell you that it was because he didn't get health care reform passed (in fact he told this to Congressional Democrats a month ago). It doesn't matter that Clinton's plan was deeply unpopular. He insists that the voters were punishing him for not getting it passed.

The current Democratic leaders bought into Clinton's fantasies. They are watching Democrats drop in the polls and convinced themselves that the only way to reverse this is to pass the health care bill. The fact that the majority of the country thinks that the reform is worse than doing nothing escapes them.

This is not new. George W. Bush did the same reasoning with the war in Iraq. Just before the war, public support was low. Bush was sure that once the shooting started, the public would get behind the war. This was true for a short time but the war became less and less popular as it dragged on. Regardless, I doubt that he would have predicted in 2003 that it would become a major issue, costing his party's majority status by 2006.

So the Democrats are caught in a death march. The lower their approval ratings the more frantic they are to pass something that they can call health care reform but the longer this goes on the lower their approval ratings drop.