When it comes to gauging support for health care reform, the question matters.
When pollsters give voters options other than a simple thumbs up or thumbs down -- for example, options like expanding the bill's scope, repealing just parts of it, or taking a wait-and-see approach -- voters express little interest in scrapping the bill altogether. ABC/Washington Post, AP, and Marist have all published polls demonstrating that dynamic.
For example, as Greg Sargent notes, the new ABC/Washington Post poll shows just 18% supporting full repeal, with another 19% supporting partial repeal. According to the poll, 25% of opponents of the health care reform law wish it had gone farther. These aren't teapartiers freaking out about a the tyranny of universal health care -- these are independents and progressives who think the bill wasn't sufficiently ambitious. Simple yes or no questions elide that fundamental fact.
To be clear, I'm not arguing that health care reform has great poll numbers. Even if a substantial portion of its critics wish it were more ambitious, they are still critics. And when voters are forced to choose between repealing the whole thing or keeping it all, repeal is generally the more popular option as CNN, Quinnipiac, and Gallup have shown. (A new NBC/WSJ poll, released today, shows repeal opponents barely edging out repeal supporters, 46% to 45%.)
But as numbers like those in the ABC poll (which mirror several polls from CNN in which one-quarter of reform critics wish it had been "more liberal"), poll numbers only tell part of the story. If you believed the polls in early 2009, the GOP was on the verge of extinction. We all know what happened in 2010, despite those early polls.
Republicans campaigned on a pledge to repeal and replace reform, but in reality they aren't going to do either. They'll pass a symbolic repeal bill that everybody knows is DOA in the Senate and they've refused to offer a health reform plan of their own. After their stunt this week in the House, they've got nowhere to go because they've refused to work with Democrats.
Sure, if the only options were to repeal or not repeal, the GOP position might prevail, but everybody knows that's a false choice. It's only Democrats who have an actual plan to deal with health care -- and they've already passed it into law. Republicans are just sitting on the sidelines throwing darts.
That doesn't mean Democrats should expect reform to become popular overnight. When it comes to individual provisions, voters are generally supportive of the elements of reform, but because the centerpiece of reform -- exchanges, the ban on pre-existing conditions, and universal coverage -- will not be implemented until 2014, the only thing voters can go on is trust. And in case you haven't noticed, public confidence in Congress is not exactly high right now.
Given the large number of people who believe the law should go farther, it's tempting to argue that Democrats ought to shift the debate to improving the law, but before they do that, they need to implement the law itself. Given that it will take several years to do that -- well past the 2012 election -- much of the health care battle will be a rhetorical debate. In 2010, that rhetorical battle was fought in Congressional races, and given the deep unpopularity of Congress, it's no surprise that health care reform was not a political asset for most members.
Clearly, 2012 will be different. In the next election, the standard bearer of that argument will be President Obama, who is by far the most popular political leader in America. Republicans probably believe they can ride opposition to health care reform to victory in 2012, but if they couldn't even ride to victory in swing states like Colorado and Nevada, how do they expect to use it to defeat someone with Obama's political skills? Health care reform will be a central issue of that election, but no matter who the tea party nominates in 2012, Republicans are kidding themselves if they think the polling shows they are likely to win.