Karl Rove observes:
Team Obama is essentially asking congressional Democrats to take a huge gamble. The White House is arguing that ramming through a controversial bill is safer for Democrats than not passing anything. This is based on the false premise that the death of HillaryCare is what doomed Democrats in 1994. Mr. Obama told a reporter in July that the defeat of HillaryCare “Helped [Republicans] regain the House.” Former President Bill Clinton echoed that thought recently by saying “doing nothing” today is “the worst thing we can do for the Democrats.”
Actually, attempting to pass HillaryCare is what brought down the party. Voters rejected a massively complicated, hugely expensive government takeover of health care and the Democrats who pushed it.
In reality, it is riskier to be at odds with where Americans are than just standing by as an unpopular proposal goes down. The problem for Democrats is they are scaring voters by proposing a takeover of health care that spends too much money, creates too much debt, gives Washington too much power, and takes too much decision-making away from doctors and patients.
But Democrats, at least the liberal leadership, have convinced themselves of the “doing nothing is political death” narrative. And, of course, Obama has staked his presidency on health-care reform. (Well that and the economy, but if unemployment isn’t in low single digits by 2012, he better have something else to point to.) Therefore, in all likelihood, something will pass. When Obama talks about the status quo being unacceptable, he’s talking not to free-market conservatives but to nervous Democrats, trying to prod them into action. But what to do?
The Obama team must now disabuse his own party of the notion that real voters hate the ideas they already have come up with (e.g., a public option, a series of government mandates, a big tax bill). He seems to be daring them: “Who are you going to believe—your own town-hall experience or me?” Well politicians are funny creatures. They may not all have a firm grasp of economics and they often don’t read the bills they are voting on. But they have a knack of discerning how a room of voters is tilting and how serious their risk of losing re-election. The survival instinct trumps all.
Obama must now wipe away the memories of August, persuade them that HillaryCare’s failure instead of HillaryCare itself was the reason they lost Congress in 1994, and convince Democrats to disregard their own political judgment and self-interest to rescue his own political fortunes. And that explains why Obama must dismiss and denigrate the popular uprising we all have witnessed. If members of his own party come to believe that populist rebellion is real and a threat to their own political future, you can bet they won’t roll the dice just to spare Obama a humiliating defeat. He, after all, has more than three years to recover; they have 14 months.
