For President Obama and the Democrats it has been a long hot summer, and August has been the cruelest month – culminating, symbolically, with the death of Senator Edward ‘Ted’ Kennedy, last of the legendary Kennedy brothers. As a further irony, Ted Kennedy’s lifelong cause was universal health care, now caught in the limbo of the August congressional recess. The question now facing the President and congressional majority is whether September will be a continuation of August, or will bring a change in the tide.
Townhall Protests
August was dominated – at least in the eyes of the US media, especially cable television – by angry rightist protesters who crowded in to denounce health care reform at ‘townhall’ meetings of legislators with their constituents. Some showed up armed, a spectacle more expected of failed states than a major industrial power. (One pro-reform activist was also reportedly armed.) The protesters, and the radio talk show hosts who promote their cause, have had the loudest megaphone during the month, duly reflected in the cable coverage.
Before evaluating causes and possible consequences, let’s take a look at some poll numbers. President Obama has continued to lose ground, steadily if modestly, in the Pollster.com survey of polling trends. As of 27 August his average job approval rating has just slipped below 50 percent to 49.4 percent, while disapproval stands at 45.9 percent. The ‘generic ballot’ for the House of Representatives, essentially a blanket approval rating, has edged barely (and insignificantly, in statistical terms) into Republican territory, with the GOP favored by 41.1 percent, Democrats by 40.5 percent.
On the other hand, strident rhetoric has not benefited the Republican Party as an institution, with the proportion of adults self-identifying as Republicans falling from 27 percent in June to 23 percent now. The Democratic Party, in contrast, has regained some ground, up from 32 percent in June to 35 percent now. In polls a month ago as many people self-identified as independents – in effect the party of those who dislike politics – as called themselves Democrats. Now Democrats show a (statistically insignificant) uptick, 34.8 percent to 33.3 percent.
The contrary movements of indicators – slightly more people calling themselves Democrats, but slightly fewer supporting Obama and the Democratic Congress – may be an indicator of disaffection, or at least irritation, on the left of the Democratic Party. This is reflected in the liberal (i.e. left-leaning) blogosphere, which does not hide its displeasure at Obama and the Democrats’ efforts to seek compromise with Republicans who show no interest in compromise whatsoever.
On the chief legislative issue of the season, health insurance reform, there has not been enough polling to show clear trends. A mid-August poll by a Republican-oriented polling firm showed only 25 percent approving of Obama’s health care proposals, while 37 percent opposed it. On the other hand, another mid-August poll by a Democratic-oriented pollster showed an impressive 79 percent in favor of a so-called public option for health insurance, with only 18 percent opposed. A ‘public option,’ meaning that people could obtain health coverage directly from the government rather than a private insurance firm, is supposedly the most controversial feature of the Obama plan.
These results are so contradictory that the main conclusion to be drawn is that the US public has only the haziest notion of what is actually in the impending bills. The bills, and the issues, are complex, and an anxious public is easily frightened by the complex and unfamiliar – hence the free reign the Right has had with a campaign based largely on hysteria and outright mendacity.
All of this takes place against the background of the Great Recession. Here, as I suggested last month, Obama and the Democrats are victims of their own success. Early in the year there was a real, palpable fear that the economy was on a graveyard spiral into a new full-blown Depression. That fear has now evaporated, for which credit goes largely to the Obama administration’s forceful actions. But the public is not unlike a medical patient: brave and stoic in the face of a life-threatening illness, but turning querulous when death no longer looms but pain and debilitation linger. The economic scorekeepers may eventually rule that the recession has already technically ended, perhaps as early as March, but unemployment remains near 10 percent, and recovery is currently expected to be very slow.
The best news for Obama, in this environment, is that his poll ratings are not worse. Both of the last two presidents, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, also took office amid economic downturns, though much less severe ones. Both had fallen into negative polling territory by late summer of their first year in office. Bush’s sinking political fortunes were restored in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attack; Clinton’s continued to sink until the Democrats lost both houses of Congress in 1994, and revived only after maladroit Republicans provided him with a foil.
Obama has thus withstood the early slings and arrows of modern presidential fortune rather better than his predecessors. Notably, no negative stereotype has yet gained traction in the mainstream media, as ‘undisciplined’ soon did with Clinton and ‘incompetent’ with the younger Bush. (The latter stereotype also vanished after 9/11, only fully re-emerging with the Hurricane Katrina debacle of 2005.) Given the US media’s love of simple story lines, this is no small advantage. Finally, it might be noted that August is traditionally a silly season in the US media, the time for shark-attack stories.
Such is the political landscape on the eve of Congress reconvening for its fall session. But the fortunes of Obama and the Democrats will depend heavily on what happens in September and October. Success and failure both create powerful narratives. Failure to pass a health care bill before the August recess has already been costly. If no bill is passed this fall, or only the feeble shadow of one, Obama and Congressional Democrats will be damned as ineffectual by both the national media and millions of their own supporters.
If on the other hand they pass a muscular health insurance reform bill, they will look muscular themselves. Republicans will of course be furious, especially if (as seems necessary at this point) the key elements of reform are passed through the ‘budget reconciliation’ process, a Senate mechanism that bypasses a filibuster and thus can pass on a simple majority vote. But fury is the normal state of Republicans when out of power, and for Democrats it will be far better to deal with their impotent fury than with the empowered fury they will display if no bill is passed.
Republicans, having loudly declared that no compromise will be acceptable to them, have already effectively dealt themselves out of the Congressional negotiating process. The real negotiations are now within the Democratic congressional majorities in each house of Congress, pitting moderate to liberal members (which are most of them) against a relatively conservative rump, commonly called Blue Dogs. Elected from conservative-leaning states and districts, they are understandably nervous about voting for a measure so fiercely opposed by the Right.
But they will be the chief victims of Democratic failure, and (along with Obama) the chief beneficiaries of Democratic success. When the Democrats lost big in 1994, after failing to pass a health care bill, it was relatively conservative Democrats who were decimated. When the tables were turned and Republicans suffered back to back defeats in 2006 and 2008, it was moderate Republicans who were decimated. The Blue Dogs are surely aware of this, and it is hard not to suspect a fair share of grandstanding in their current obstructive stance.
Given the large Democratic majority in both chambers, and the availability of ‘budget reconciliation’ as a mechanism for avoiding a Senate filibuster, a strong health bill can be passed even if a number of the Blue Dogs defect on the final votes. The question for Democrats, and for President Obama, is whether they will display the will, and the killer instinct, that the modern Democratic Party has all too often lacked. But if they do hang tough, and pass a strong bill, they may well find that nothing succeeds like success.
