Judging by the national media coverage of yesterday’s overwhelming public vote against Obamacare in Missouri, the Democratic tactic of discounting the referendum’s significance ahead of time was a good one. Much of the (limited) press coverage portrayed the vote as a foregone conclusion and a faulty indicator for how the issue is going to play out in the fall elections.
But when it comes right down to it, a few tactical maneuvers are not going to help the Dems much here. Swing voters clearly identify Democratic candidates with Obamacare — and they don’t like it. The Republican base detests it and seem poised to turn out in massive numbers to punish its creators. The Democratic base favors the legislation but not enthusiastically. Even House Democrats in competitive districts who voted against Obamacare are being weighed down by the issue, as evidenced by a string of recent, scary polls putting incumbents near or below underfunded GOP challengers.
The Left continues to believe that the more Americans learn about the legislation, and the further away we get from its controversial enactment, the more public support will grow. I doubt it. In the past few weeks alone, voters in many states have been hearing about plans for significant premium increases for 2011 by both private insurers and state employee health plans. In every case, insurance officials have cited Obamacare as the chief cause of rising costs. In Arizona, for example, state officials project that state employees will see their health care costs rise by as much as a third next year, due largely to the implementation of the initial stages of Obamacare. And in Kentucky, hospital officials project that the Medicaid expansion at the heart of Obamacare will cost the state’s hospitals more than a $1 billion over the next decade.While in a few cases these might be exaggerations or self-serving claims, for the most part the explanation is valid — and voters will tend to believe it.
As long as conservative leaders and candidates couch their promises of repeal within a larger message of reform, the Obamacare issue will continue to work to their advantage. The Missouri vote is indeed an indicator of things to come.