Earlier this year, President Obama and Speaker Pelosi guaranteed us that once the President's healthcare bill passed Congress, Democratic fortunes would dramatically improve as the public got to know the particulars better. Speaker Pelosi famously said that we had to pass the bill to discover what was in it and President Obama said that he welcomed a fight this November on the healthcare bill. Today, with the bill's continued unpopularity and the Democrats facing a very unfavorable political climate for the November elections, the White House signaled a tactical retreat. The question though is whether this retreat may be the first of many to come, particularly if the Republicans make major gains this November as now seems very likely.
According to Politico:
Key White House allies are dramatically shifting their attempts to defend health care legislation, abandoning claims that it will reduce costs and deficit and instead stressing a promise to "improve it."
Rather than defending the President's legislation or attacking the Republicans for opposing it, the White House and Democratic leaders are now conceding the bill's unpopularity and asking the voters to keep the core provisions in place and to give them another chance to fix the problems:
[The new White House position] suggests that Democrats are acknowledging the failure of their predictions that the health care legislation would grow more popular after its passage, as its benefits became clear and rhetoric cooled. Instead, the presentation is designed to win over a skeptical public, and to defend the legislation — and in particular the individual mandate — from a push for repeal.
In particular, the White House is raising the white flag on its claim that the legislation would bend the cost curve and reduce the deficit.
The presentation also concedes that the fiscal and economic arguments that were the White House's first and most aggressive sales pitch have essentially failed.
"Many don’t believe health care reform will help the economy," says one slide.
The presentation's final page of "Don'ts" counsels against claiming "the law will reduce costs and deficit."
The presentation advises, instead, sales pitches that play on personal narratives and promises to change the legislation.
This decision to play a defensive appeasement, concession and surrender game is playing right into the hands of the Republicans. They can now say, see, even the White House thinks the bill's promises were a bunch of crap. And if the Republicans make major gains this November, what grounds will the Democrats have for fighting off the inevitable attempts to gut or even repeal the healthcare bill? Will the President, who has signaled retreat over and over again, veto these efforts? Will our Democratic representatives, with their shrunken majorities (or worse), support the President if he does decide to fight? Count me as extremely skeptical.
Once you start down the road of conceding arguments and retreating in the face of opposition, the political momentum shifts inevitably to the other side. And that means that the healthcare bill will inevitably be torn to shreds. If the President is unwilling to fight for this legislation, which now seems to be where we're heading, he should never have pushed for its passage in the first place. Because if this legislation is overturned, we will never see another president expend political capital to enact comprehensive healthcare reform.