What game were we playing when the health bill was making its way through Congress? Was it eleven-dimensional chess? I lose track of the number of dimensions. I’m still trying to solve Rubik’s cube, myself. But the game, whatever it was, was won. At least in the dimension that consists of passing legislation.
However, in the other ten dimensions, the game was lost. Let’s check out what happened or is likely to happen in some of those dimensions.
The Invisible Dimension
The Obama administration dedicated most of its political capital and a year or so of its time to passing the health reform bill. That commitment of resources meant that other things were not being done. At the end of the day, there was a health care bill, a tangible and substantial achievement. But what we won’t ever see is everything that might have been done had that effort been spent elsewhere. There could have been more popular or more important legislation, things like a bigger stimulus or a bill addressing global warming. (And if there are historians around in 100 years, the one question that they will ask about the Congress that is about to expire is, How could they have ignored climate change? In hindsight, the decision to push health care and ignore global warming will be viewed as an instance of world-historical lunacy.)
The Political Dimension
November wasn’t supposed to turn out the way it did. Sure, the Democrats were going to lose seats in the House, that was a given. But losing control of the House wasn’t supposed to happen, and a year ago nobody thought it was going to happen. In the Senate, given the luck of the draw of what seats were up this round, it wasn’t certain that the Democrats would lose any seats at all.
The health reform bill had a particular toxicity to it. It was a bill that was grudgingly accepted by its supporters and loathed by its detractors. Not a good combination. And the longer the bill was debated, the less popular it became. What killed the Democrats in November was the much remarked upon enthusiasm gap. Health reform wasn’t the only reason that Democrats went down, but it would hard to find a single issue in which the enthusiasm gap was more starkly exhibited.
The Dimension of Time
The Democrats have particularly bad timing. This was not a good year to lose an election, particularly not to lose an election massively on a national scale. What is about to happen is unprecedented. Software has been around for a few years to make partisan redistricting virtually an exact science. There has never been a wave election in a redistricting year when this technology existed. Going into this year’s election, the map tilted against the Democrats. A 50-50 split of the national House vote already meant that the Republicans would come out with a majority. That tilt will become quite a bit more pronounced. The Democrats didn’t just lose the House for 2 years. They lost it for a decade, minimum.
The Pyrrhic Dimension
OK, so a lot of Democrats lost their seats. At least, they lost it for a good cause. They achieved something that eluded us for half a century.
Well, sort of. Except that the health reform bill that was passed probably could have been passed 40 years ago. The unsuccessful efforts over the decades were attempts to get better bills passed than the Obama bill.
OK, but it’s still something, and it’s something significant. Except that it may never take effect. As we have learned, the bill had no severability clause to permit specific sections of the bill to be struck down by the courts, without jeopardizing the entire bill. This is incredible. Isn’t this boilerplate language? Isn’t it in any bill of any signficance? And earlier versions of the bill had a severability clause, which was somehow stripped out before final passage.
Moreover, the bill doesn’t take effect until after Obama’s current term ends. It is entirely possible, maybe even likely, that both houses of Congress and the Executive Branch will be controlled by Republicans at that time. The bill could well be repealed before it even takes effect.
A Paradoxical Dimension: No Politics is Local
Wisconsin is a pretty middle-of-the-road state. It’s generally a toss-up state in presidential elections, and no Republican since Reagan has received Wisconsin’s electoral vote.
What happened in 2010 is extraordinary. Wisconsin essentially overnight became a Tea Party state. Extremely conservative Republicans were elected in the statewide races for senator and governor. The races had completely different issues, but the results, broken down county by county, were essentially identical. It was as if voters had just ignored all the issues and all the candidates, and just voted D or R.
Moreover, both houses of the Wisconsin legislature, which had been under Democrat control, shifted massively to the Republicans. Wisconsin voters who were angry about the health reform bill came out in droves to vote against Obama. Except that Obama wasn’t on the ballot. So they voted against every Democrat in sight, be it Russ Feingold or their Democratic state rep.
And once again, the loss of Wisconsin can’t be reversed. I don’t know if Wisconsin has ever had a partisan redistricting. There hasn’t been one recently, as Wisconsin is the sort of state where power doesn’t gravitate too strongly to either side. That’s over now. The district lines will be drawn so that barring some dramatic change in political affiliations, the Republicans will have essentially permanent control of the state legislature.
A One-Point Dimension
There are people who live in the lost dimensions. I am one such person. Next week, when Wisconsin’s government is handed over to the Republicans, there will be dramatic changes. The people who will be immediately affected are the state employees. The governor-elect has made it clear that he intends to cut the benefits of state employees.
There are different numbers floating around. The governor-elect has discussed making state employees pay for 12% of their health benefits. He has also said that the state will recoup a certain number of millions of dollars from reducing health benefits of state employees. The math doesn’t work. A 12% contribution would not come anywhere close to providing the budget reductions the governor has suggested he would realize.
Suppose you take the governor’s figure of how many actual dollars would be taken away from employee health benefits, and divide that by the number of state employees. The result is a reduction of benefits so dramatic that Wisconsin state employees like me will be reduced to Walmart employees. Wisconsin will be offering its employees a health benefit at a cost that few of them can afford on the salaries they are being paid. The practical effect is that state employees will be stripped of their health insurance.
So how does it look in my personal dimension? Before health reform, I had health insurance. As an indirect result of the bill, I may lose that insurance.
I can’t handle eleven-dimensional chess. I’m going back to my Rubik’s cube.
JLG, thanks for your thoughtful and detailed post. Here’s something by way of response.
The Invisible Dimension
For 40 years, health care for all has been the holy grail of Democratic domestic social policy. In 2009-10 democratic advocates for health care reform were better organized and better funded than democratic advocates for any other major policy area—including climate change/energy reform legislation. As for the stimulus, remember how bad the economy was when Obama took office. There’s a legitimate argument that the Recovery Act had to be passed immediately to prevent another depression. A “better” Recovery Act passed in, say, July 2009 would not have been better.
The Political Dimension
The three biggest factors causing Democratic losses in November were:
Health care was a factor, but a relatively minor one.
The Time Dimension
Actually, what hurts most in a census year is losing control of state legislatures. That means a few congressional districts packed with Democratic voters, and lots of districts with 55% Republican voters. Two reasons to have hope that this does not mean a lost decade in the House:
The Pyrrhic Dimension
Agreed on the “joint and severable” language. WTF?
As for the “we could have won this 30 years ago, so it’s not a real victory now” argument, I don’t buy it. A win is a win, even if it’s delayed and imperfect. Heck, all wins are imperfect. It’s Politics 101 after losing a fight to tell your opponent (and the media), “Oh, it isn’t that big a deal anyway.”
As for when the Affordable Care Act takes effect, some of it (including some of the most popular provisions) has already taken effect.
The Paradoxical Dimension
Again, people voted primarily on the economy. That doesn’t ease the pain of all those new tea partying Republicans moving into the offices in Madison (and other state houses across the country). Two years from now, we’ll have a larger, younger, more diverse electorate. If the economy is growing steadily in 2012, then it could be a very good year for Democrats.
A One Point Dimension
As Bill Clinton would say, I feel your pain. (I’ve got public employees in my family, too.) Here’s the thing about all those crazy, newbie Republican legislators. They don’t know what they’re doing, and they don’t even know what they don’t know. You’ve got public employee unions that do know what they’re doing, and that do know how to fight. It’s going to be an ugly couple of years, but these wingnuts can be beat.
Thanks for your response.
I have just a few minutes here, so I wanted to focus on two or three points.
A lot of what you say depends on the motivation of voters in the last election. I placed a lot of the motivation on the health reform bill. You say that the results were determined by the economy. I’ll tell you why I disagree with that. The closest comparable midterm year that I could think of was 1982. It was Reagan’s first midterm, the economy hadn’t geared up yet, and the GOP lost 26 seats in the House, but actually gained a seat in the Senate. I would have expected a similar result in 2010, absent the reaction to the health reform bill.
I don’t think anyone was predicting the magnitude of the Democratic losses until after health reform passed. The story line that was developed by the GOP, I think quite effectively, was that Pelosi and Reid pushed this bill down the throats of an American public that opposed it, as evidenced by the polls and the Massachusetts senate election. (Sort of ironically, I didn’t see that election as being determined by the health care bill. I thought it was the amazing ineptitude of Martha Coakley more than anything else, but perhaps you are closer to that situation.)
Also, I don’t buy that we can recoup the losses in 2012. The map is going to be redrawn to reinforce the Republican wins of this year. The Senate affords almost no opportunities for Democratic gains (and many risks of losses) in 2012.
As for the unions being able to roll the inexperienced freshman legislators in Madison, I don’t see that happening at all. I’ve been to union meetings where this has been discussed, and the feeling that I’ve come out with is one of helplessness. The legislators may not know what they are doing, but how difficult is it for them to vote the way their party leaders tell them to? And how much pull can the unions have when the freshmen won their seats in spite of the fact that the unions were backing their opponents?
I wrote a comment on another post about long-term demographic trends, and I got jumed on, but I don’t think the picture is as rosy for Democrats as you and others are claiming. It is a fact (someone questioned this the last time I posted, but I checked the sociological research, and it backs this up) that the number of children in a family is strongly correlated with intensity of religious beliefs and practices. By and large, religious people are conservative, and the most politically active religious organizations are quite conservative. That suggests that there is a differential birth rate favoring children brought up with conservative mindsets.
JLG, thanks for your additional thoughts. I’ll add a couple of thoughts, just to continue the conversation.
1982 is a good comparable midterm election. However, back then House Republicans were in the minority and had fewer seats to lose than the 2010 Democrats who—because of significant gains in 2006 and 2008—had dozens of marginal seats to defend. Likewise in the 2010 Senate—an unusually large Democratic majority made it likely Republicans would cut into that margin. And, as you correctly point out, Democrats have several vulnerable Senate incumbents in 2012.
As for the upcoming Madison legislative session, you’d certainly know better than I what you’re up against. I’d just make the following observation: any time you have a lot of rookies, they’re going to make rookie mistakes. The challenge is to be ready for those mistakes, and to counterattack on the right ones. (See: Tip O’Neill v. Ronald Reagan in August 1981 on Social Security, and Bill Clinton v. Newt Gingrich on the government shutdown.)
Finally on demography: I won’t argue your data point on the correlation between family size and religiosity. However, when looking at demographic trends for a country as large as ours, I think it’s a mistake to put too much weight on any one demographic factor.
I know, for example, there’s great concern among some politically conservative evangelicals that their children and grandchildren increasingly support civil rights for gays (or at least don’t consider it an important religious issue).
Also, your assertion that “by and large, religious people are conservative” is, in my view, overly broad. Take the Catholic Church for example: very conservative (in current American political terms) on a range of sex and sexuality issues, very liberal (in current American political terms) on a range of foreign policy (e.g., START, foreign aid) and domestic policy (e.g., safety net and immigration) issues. Or take theologically and politically conservative Hispanic Pentecostal ministers: many are strong supporters of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and strong supporters of the DREAM Act. Or take the most reliable and most reliably progressive faction of the Democratic coalition—African-Americans: high intensity of religious belief and practice, highly politically active religious organizations, a growing percentage of the US population (particularly among those under 30).
Best of luck dealing with your new legislature. Keep fighting the good fight.