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Public opinion polls are a big deal in the US, especially around election time and now during the aftermath of the health care mess on Capitol Hill. The major media treat polls as though they were equal to voting between election. “Here’s what the people say”, seems to be the general approach. Reporters continually ask politicians: why aren’t you voting the way the polls are going?
This is ignorant and uninformed. First, because public opinion is an emerging and changing thing. Always changing. Second, having an opinion about something is far different from having to actually do something, like vote or make a campaign contribution. Opinions are easy, decisions are often difficult. This doesn’t mean that individual views aren’t important, but it does mean they should not be taken as a kind of rule book from the heartland. They indicate, but they don’t, and shouldn’t, dominate.
Politicians try to treat opinion polls as gospel when they agree with them and trivial when they don’t. The Republicans were screaming for weeks about the Dems “defying the American people” on health care when, in dozens of cases in the past, they, the Republicans, have proudly gone against what most people say they want. If your opinion agrees with mine, you must be brilliant. Otherwise, buzz off.
Here’s another thing: a poll doesn’t reflect whether an opinion is based on knowledge or ignorance. New polls are out today (3.28.10) showing that most people still oppose the health insurance changes approved by Congress this week. Well, first, it is a bit early to take such a poll. Had it been taken in a week or two, the results might be entirely different. They surely would have shown at least some shift in favor of the measure.
How many people who are all fired up about changes in health care even know what is in the bill? How many people even know the major provisions? The polls don’t reflect that, of course. We don’t know what they don’t know, to go all Rumsfeld on the matter. This is an unknown, unknown and by-cracky, we are going to have to wait and see.
It would not be difficult to believe that most of the people who are so strongly against this particular bill are using it as a focal point for anger about many other things. First, there is the more than year long “negotiating” mess in Congress. Perhaps for the first time in decades, the American public got to see, up close, just how awful Congress can be. It was a thoroughly disgusting spectacle and I am saying this as one who covered Congress for years, so I should be battle hardened. Second, there’s this little ol’recession going on and why the hell are they worrying about health care in the first place?
Here is something else to consider: the public was quite right that “health care reform” was being used as a catchall phrase when, in fact, many different goals were being sought all at once. Restructuring Medicare to save billions, is that reform? Adding taxes on wealthy Americans to pay for health care? How about adding taxes on the so called “Cadillac health plans” (which didn’t make it into the final bill)? The public sensed they were being offered a whole bunch of changes they might not like while the lights and cameras were focused on “reform”. This is the ordinary Washington game, but with 14 months of “debate” on these issues, the raw sores started to show through the band-aids.
The massive bailout of Wall Street, which was set in motion during the Bush administration, was just too much for many Americans. Then, bailout the banks, which have been robbing people blind with fees for the last couple of decades. Bailout the car companies, which have been making inferior products with high wage workers for at least three decades. Bailout out AIG, whatever the hell that was. Spend billions and billions in Iraq and Afghanistan and put the lives of American soldiers in the crosshairs of suicide bombers. Where does it end?
The Tea Party looks more and more like the Old Grouch party every day. What do you do if you are 58 years old, lost your job and don’t know where to turn? There must be someone to blame, right? Why not take on the whole modern world? What the hell do we need a government for in the first place?
The right is kept all juiced up on the dangers of a powerful national government, when, in fact, we are getting government by corporations, inch by inch, yard by yard and more so everyday. The right is always, also, focused on taxes as a great evil to divert the attention of voters from the real issue, the fact that most Americans have not had wage increases enough to keep up with inflation over the last two and a half decades.
There is a lot to be angry and concerned about and it is being channeled by the Tea Party people and the Republicans toward their pet projects. This disguises the fact that the time when the Republican program would work, to any degree, is past. There will be no more massive tax cuts for the wealthy, no matter which party controls Congress or wins the presidency. No president, for the foreseeable future, will take us into a war of choice, like Iraq, because we proved there we can’t afford it and the price lives is too high. Preemptive wars are out. When the next one comes around (as they always do), it will be by stark necessity rather than flippant, prep boy option.
Deregulation of business? For a very long time, we have heard cries on the right of just how great that would be. Unless someone can come up with a winning argument that the banks, credit card companies and mortgage lenders were regulated into their financial crisis meltdown, that argument isn’t going to be pushed much any more. As far as I can see, the Republican program has moved out from under their feet (which is why Obama was elected) and the Tea Party arrived just in time to cover-up their political and moral bankruptcy. A disguise does not a future make.
The Republicans, right now, need to become more like centrist Democrats of old. Instead, they are being pulled on a potentially disastrous course toward extremism. This could provide sweet victories for a season, but it is very likely to wash them into the wilderness for a very long time once voters see what is really at hand.
Don’t quote opinion polls right now on health care. Wait at least a month for the first “snap shot”, then wait another year for a clear view to emerge. People could be saying they don’t like the changes for a long time, even after they start to benefit. Hell, even farmers don’t like the Federal government, even while they slurp up 6 billion dollars or more every year in subsidies.
The possibility exists of a massive backlash against those who have opposed the health care changes. What happens when people decide that this was not a Federal take over of health care after all? What happens as people learn there are real benefits in the bill for themselves and their families? The opposition was so radical in its descriptive language that they might get beaten up a bit as voters come to see the problems with the bill were being over hyped (as opposed to just hyped).
The key to opinions is how they can be turned into action. The clearest indication of the national mood at the moment is this: vote everyone out who is in power, both Republican and Democrat. If that notion continues and grows, neither party is going to be too happy with the hornet’s nest on which they have placed their backsides.
Doug Terry, 3.28.10
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