Mar 13 President, Pelosi Get Sober Advice

President Obama and Speaker Pelosi got some sober advice from two old pro Democratic pollsters in Friday morning's Washington Post. Here's the advice the White House and House Democrats should pay most of their attention to:

First, the battle for public opinion has been lost. Comprehensive health care has been lost. If it fails, as appears possible, Democrats will face the brunt of the electorate's reaction. If it passes, however, Democrats will face a far greater calamitous reaction at the polls. Wishing, praying or pretending will not change these outcomes.

Nothing has been more disconcerting than to watch Democratic politicians and their media supporters deceive themselves into believing that the public favors the Democrats' current health-care plan. Yes, most Americans believe, as we do, that real health-care reform is needed. And yes, certain proposals in the plan are supported by the public.

President Obama has been trying to convince congressional Democrats that everything is fine and that not passing health care is worse than passing a bad health care bill. Mssrs. Schoen and Caddell are right in highlighting the fact that this issue is a loser for President Obama and Democrats.

The thing that I've found amazing is that the American people consistently say no to the Democrats' health care legislation. It isn't like the polls have been close. All of the polls I've seen have shown a double-digit margin between supporting the Democrats' legislation vs. supporting scrapping the bill, with scrapping the bill consistently outpolling passing the Democrats' health care legislation.

How people can read those polls and conclude that the Democrats' health care legislation is getting more popular is beyond me. People roll their eyes when they hear Speaker Pelosi say that people will like it once they see the benefits.

They won't.

While it's true that the American people like certain parts of the bill, the truth is that the American people hate other parts of the bill:

Many more Americans believe the legislation will worsen their health care, cost them more personally and add significantly to the national deficit. Never in our experience as pollsters can we recall such self-deluding misconstruction of survey data.

The popular spin these days is that the only reason for the Democrats' health care legislation's unpopularity is being caused by the Republicans' misinformation campaign. People understand that there's a difference between deficit neutrality and lower costs.

I've said repeatedly that all it takes for the CBO to score a bill as being deficit neutral is tons of tax increases. Raising taxes on something certainly won't make the product cheaper.

Another thing working against the Democrats' legislation is that people believe, rightly, that government can't be trusted:

Second, the country is moving away from big government, with distrust growing more generally toward the role of government in our lives. Scott Rasmussen asked last month whose decisions people feared more in health care: that of the federal government or of insurance companies. By 51 percent to 39 percent, respondents feared the decisions of federal government more. This is astounding given the generally negative perception of insurance companies.

The Democrats' pitch to the American people, at this point, appears to be 'Support our legislation. Government sucks less than insurance companies.' Once the argument devolves into which thing sucks worse, the battle is lost. That's the position Democrats find themselves fighting from:

Health care is no longer a debate about the merits of specific initiatives. Since the spectacle of Christmas dealmaking to ensure passage of the Senate bill, the issue, in voters' minds, has become less about health care than about the government and a political majority that will neither hear nor heed the will of the people.

When people heard about the different deals that were made, one of the first things they thought was that Harry Reid was bribing these senators. That told them that this wasn't about reducing health care costs or lowering health insurance premiums. Those bribes told the American people that this legislation was about a Democratic power grab. Once that was known, the hearts and minds battle was over.

The American people want lower health care costs and reduced health insurance premiums. PERIOD. Arguing that the bill is deficit neutral is a waste of time. First, we know that government running anything, especially on such a large scale, isn't efficient. We got further proof of that this week through this American Spectator article, in which President Obama implicitly admits that:

The White House says the increased audits could save taxpayers $2 billion over the next three years. That's only a small fraction of the $98 billion worth of improper payments the White House says were made last year alone ($54 billion from Medicare and Medicaid). But it's an improvement over current practice. It's also a fascinating admission from the president.

The move acknowledges that the public sector has failed to properly police itself. Obama, who reflexively opposes "privatization" on principle, has expanded the privatization of an important government function, auditing the government's own books. Why would he do that? He answers the question himself. Providing financial incentives to private auditors will save the government more money than relying on in-house bureaucrats to self-police.

President Obama is insisting that the federal government play a larger role in health care even though they've admitted that they can't police themselves. Voters know that something that's sloppily run will cost them more.

If President Obama wasn't such an ideologue, he'd accept the advice of Mssrs. Schoen and Caddell. Unfortunately, President Obama is an ideologue who's too narcissistic to admit that he's made a mistake.

President Obama's narcissism is why Democrats will feel the voters' wrath this November.

Comments welcome at LFR.