In the wake of the passage of the health care bill (and please don’t fuck up the last of it in the Senate, mmkay?) everyone and their sister is trying to determine if this is good or bad for the November elections. Steve Benen at the Washington Monthly has been having particular fun pointing out the awkwardness of the Red “repeal” position. There isn’t anything particularly wrong with these kinds of analyses, but it’s still much too soon to begin seriously looking at November.
Health care or no health care, 2010 was always going to be the hardest year for the new Blue America. Bush the Younger, though he hovers over everything like a twisted phantasm, isn’t on television every other day to remind people of why they need to vote Democratic. (Though he is, of course, still a creepy jerk (via).) And 2010 is the same part of the electoral cycle that tripped up political masters Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan. The only president to have gained seats in his first midterm election in the last thirty years is Bush the Younger, and he did it by deliberately terrorizing the whole country and beating the war drums as loud as he could. It was one of the most shameful political gambits in American history (and that says something), but it worked. Obama doesn’t have that option.
Instead, Obama and the Blues are going to have to fight on what they’ve done and haven’t done. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Obama’s reign has been a mixed bag, but he and his fellows shouldn’t be in politics if they have any trouble comparing that record favorably to what the Reds did. In Iraq, Obama’s already done something his predecessor failed to do: actually lower the number of American troops. The economy remains flat, but it’s in a hell of a lot better shape than it was a year ago, and hopefully will be even better by November. And, of course, there’s health care.
But all the euphoria surrounding health care reform ignores an obvious political reality. As long as diseases still exist in the United States on November 2nd, unless death itself has been halted, the Reds will scream long and loud that health care has been a failure. Tristero at Hullabaloo remained unmoved by the celebrations and called it perfectly on Monday morning:
My guess is that such naively optimistic, and thoroughly delusional, sentiments are rampant right now. They think “we” won. Even worse, they think that Republicans realize they lost and have folded. That is sheer nonsense.
Democrats fail to understand that the real fight, the one with no holds barred whatsoever, began exactly one millisecond after the gavel came down. And if history is any judge, they are completely unprepared for what is about to hit them.
Foul epithets? Teabaggers carrying guns to rallies? Members of Congress finding excuses to justify terrorism against government offices? Don’t Democrats get it? That’s what the rightwing fanatics hellbent on wrecking this country were doing when they were being polite. That’s their idea of civility. The gloves have just come off. After all, they got nothing to lose.
We can see it beginning already: secessionist rhetoric, vandalism, litigation. And this thing’s barely been law for twenty four hours.
Which is not to say that health care will be a drag on the Democrats. Assuming it’s implemented reasonably well (which means that a decent chunk of people see benefits right away), Obama and the rest of his party should have no trouble touting it as a campaign issue. But it isn’t going to be easy, particularly if it has to stand alone.
Giving the health care bill a companion major domestic achievement is the next step, and the Blues are absolutely correct to move directly to financial reform. The banks may indeed own Capitol Hill, but putting the chains on them is about as politically popular as a thing can be. The excuse for those hideous bailouts and the ongoing theft of federal money is that there was/is an emergency. A better time to pass laws to prevent that from happening will never come again. Even in the likely event that financial reform ends up like health care (not as much as it should be, but much, much more than we had), it’d still be a major triumph, and one that, like health care, ought to be easy to sell come fall.
If there’s one lesson to be learned from the 180 degree swing in media perceptions of the two parties over the last few days it’s this: breathless 24-news, who’s up/who’s down style coverage is cheap. It comes and goes with startling speed and who had the better day in March doesn’t mean a damn thing come October. Yes, the health bill is a good thing, practically and politically. Yes, it will help in November. But “health care” is less good than “health care & other stuff”.
The overarching thing to keep in mind here is not a few days of good press. It’s that the prize waiting on the other side of November 2nd is a fantastic one; and the most effective work that can be done right now is passing more pieces of popular legislation. Winning Congress four years ago was good, and getting back into the White House two years ago was better. But holding Congress by workable margins (you can lose a few seats, it’s okay) would be the best.
That would mean that those other elections weren’t flukes, it would mean that they weren’t just a rejection of an unpopular president. It would put the Reds on a three cycle losing streak heading into a presidential year with all the advantages of incumbency. Badly fucked as the country still is, it would mean that things are undeniably going in the right direction for the right reasons. That’s the hump the Blues have to get over if they want to be a stable majority party. But there’s a lot of ugliness between here and there, and it’s much too soon to celebrate.
