Health reform is shuffling toward its endgame, and even though the bill's popularity resembles George Bush's circa 2007, Democrats seem determined to push the bill through. Browse through certain liberal blogs, or listen to Democratic leadership speeches, and you'll read the same justification again and again: However bad passing this bill might be, politically speaking, not passing it would be much, much worse.
I've been skeptical of this line of argument for quite some time. This summer, I showed that Democrats from Republican-leaning districts who supported President Clinton's agenda fared significantly worse in the 1994 midterm election than those who did not. It seems almost certain that an additional vote for Clinton's then-wildly-unpopular healthcare bill would not have helped these Democrats any; passing ClintonCare almost certainly would have made 1994 even worse for the Democrats. Likewise, after taking tough votes on the stimlulus package and cap-and-trade, it seemed unlikely that a vote on the then-mildly-unpopular health care bill would help Congressional Democrats.
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