Readers Question DEM's Motives on Health Care

Readers Question DEM's Motives on Health Care: "Earlier this week I asked why Democrats continue to push a national health care bill, even though dozens of polls show a solid majority of Americans don't want it. Are President Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid irrational? Politically tone deaf? What could possibly account for their rush to pass legislation that the public decisively rejects -- less than a year before the 2010 elections?

I outlined the theories of a Democratic strategist who asked to remain anonymous. He said that Pelosi is determined to fulfill the Democratic Party's destiny -- a national health care system -- and believes losing 20, or even 40 Democratic seats in the House would be an acceptable price for achieving a goal the party has pursued since Franklin Roosevelt. The president is looking for a crowning achievement and has the comfort of not running for re-election in 2010. And, the strategist said, Reid believes that whatever losses Senate Democrats sustain in 2010 will happen regardless of whether health care is passed.

So they all forge ahead.

After the column was published, I heard from many readers with their own ideas. The strategist wasn't telling me the whole story, they said; the Democrats' motivations go much deeper. So here are some other theories for the party's headlong rush into what looks like political disaster.

'The Democrats are playing for the long term,' wrote one reader. 'They know that, once they've planted a new entitlement, it will grow as fast as they can water it with taxpayer dollars.'"