Think everybody who opposes health care reform is a teabagging conservative outraged that government is going too far? Well, think again. Nate Silver looks at a recent poll probing this very topic:
It turns out that a significant minority of about 25 percent of the people who opposed the plan -- or about 12 of the overall sample -- did so from the left; they thought the plan didn't go far enough.
So one in four reform opponents want to see a more progressive plan. The implication of that is huge. As Nate showed, just 35% of the public opposes the current reform plan because they think it goes too far. 31% support the current reform because they want health care reform, 20% are undecided, 12% oppose it because it doesn't go far enough, and 3% support the current reform bill even though they don't want reform because they think this is about as good a deal as they can get.
When you look at the landscape as Nate has, you have 43% of the public who wants progressive reform, 38% who doesn't, and the rest are undecided. It's still close on the overall question of health care reform, but despite all the noisemaking from the right, it's still the left that is carrying the day. That's something members of Congress should keep in mind as they finish up with the health care reform bill.