The Fix - The political dangers of passing a health care bill

The Fix - The political dangers of passing a health care bill: "The White House -- as we wrote yesterday -- is dead set on passing the health care bill and will stop at nothing politically to get it done.

But, new data in the NBC/WSJ poll suggests that simply passing a bill -- whatever is in it -- won't solve Democrats' political problems on health care.

Two data points stand out:

* Just 32 percent of of the sample said that President Obama's plan is a good idea while 47 percent said is a bad idea. Public opinion on that question had eroded even since October when 38 percent thought passing some sort of health care bill was a good idea while 42 percent said it was a bad one.

* More people now believe that it would be better to not pass the plan and maintain the status quo (44 percent) than think passing the plan and changing the system is the right course (41 percent). In October, those numbers were reversed with 45 percent agreeing with the idea that passing the Obama plan was the right thing to do while 39 percent preferred to keep the status quo in place.

What that data tells us is that the White House is pushing to passage a piece of legislation that large swaths of the American people neither want nor think will work."