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Deja Vu All Over Again
The scene is set: a young, energetic Democrat is elected to the Presidency after years of Republican rule. Along with him, he gets Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate. He takes office with Congress ready to enact his ambitious agenda. One of his first big agenda items is an "economic stimulus" bill — a big-ticket spending bill overflowing with pork barrel projects that are supposed to stimulate the economy. Buoyed by his popularity, and in response to promises made on the campaign, he undertakes a major overhaul of the national health care system, moving towards more government control with an expensive, bureaucracy-laden plan built on mandates, taxes, and European-style statism. While initially supportive of the endeavor in broad terms, the public starts to sour on the idea the more they learn about the details, and Republicans — free market ideas spurned — go on a disciplined opposition path against the bill.
As the debate heats up over health care, more of the public becomes disillusioned with the new President's hard-left movement after running as a candidate who would bring Republicans and Democrats together to solve problems. Hard-line Democrats dig in on health care, with some of the more moderate (and vulnerable) Democrats negotiating concessions. Then, finally, come the first two major elections since the President was inaugurated and the health care bill introduced. Republicans take over previously-Democratic governorships in New Jersey and Virginia, rocking the electoral landscape.
Sound familiar? No, I'm not talking about President Obama, his $787 billion "stimulus", cap-and-trade, health care "reform", and the recent victories of Bob McDonnell in Virginia and Chris Christie in New Jersey. Instead, I'm referring to 1993, and the first year of President Bill Clinton. The similarities are striking, yet it seems that Democratic politicians and strategists failed to learn the lessons of history — and were thus doomed to repeat it.
The lesson becomes even more stark and undeniable when you consider what happened in yesterday's special election in Massachusetts — yes, Massachusetts (!) — where Republican Scott Brown upended Democrat Martha Coakley in the special election to fill the rest of the term of the late Ted Kennedy's Senate seat. There are differences — the "ObamaCare" plans have actually passed the House and Senate (Clinton's plan collapsed without a vote in the House and Senate), and prior to the election Democrats in 2009 held a filibuster-proof majority. There was no special, dramatic race in early 1994 like we have in Massachusetts. But the parallels are certainly easily observable.
One interesting aspect is that when Obama came to office in January 2009 along with a Congress that had strengthened its Democratic majorities since taking the House and Senate in 2006, health care reform was discussed as a major priority. The line from the Democratic leadership was that a 1993-like failure on achieving government-centric "reform" couldn't be repeated, else the Democrats would suffer at the ballot box in a similar manner to that seen in the Republican takeover of Congress in the sea-change elections of 1994. So, to ensure that something — anything — passed, they begged, cajoled, bargained, and arm-twisted their way to slim votes.
Yet it appears that the Democrats learned the wrong lesson from 1993's failed attempt: the voting public wasn't punishing Democrats in 1994 for not passing a Big Government health insurance bill, they were punishing Democrats for attempting it in the first place. One need only to look at Senator-elect Brown's poll numbers versus Martha Coakley to see that as the votes on health insurance in the Senate began passing, as the deals became public knowledge and the public approval of the bill dropped, Brown surged. Even normally reliable Democratic voters in Massachusetts — and certainly independents — did not like what they were seeing. Now, while many Democrats in DC are urging caution, some are saying that (somehow) the election of a candidate whose top promise to oppose the current version of national health care "reform" is a sign to Congress and the President that the public wants them to pass... the current version of national health care "reform".
Brown also made a shrewd political point in opposing the "ObamaCare" (promising to be the deciding vote against it in the reconciliation vote): Massachusetts already has its own version of "universal coverage". To pass a national bill would be to have Bay Staters subsidizing health care for residents of other states. Thus, he made himself a viable option to people on both sides of the debate: hate the Massachusetts plan, and you certainly wouldn't want to see it implemented on a federal level;; love the Massachusetts plan, and you still get to keep it without raising your taxes to provide it to someone else.
Will the last chapter of the original story be duplicated in 2010 — will Republicans ride a tide of "change" to control of both Houses of Congress? Or will the Democrats take the proper lesson from the "'Scott" heard round the world" in Massachusetts (tip of the hat to the Young Republicans National Federation for that one) and adjust their course? We will, of course, see in the coming weeks and months, as Democratic leaders deal with health care, cap-and-trade, jobs, and other issues. But in the meantime, it certainly seems like we've seen this movie before.
As the debate heats up over health care, more of the public becomes disillusioned with the new President's hard-left movement after running as a candidate who would bring Republicans and Democrats together to solve problems. Hard-line Democrats dig in on health care, with some of the more moderate (and vulnerable) Democrats negotiating concessions. Then, finally, come the first two major elections since the President was inaugurated and the health care bill introduced. Republicans take over previously-Democratic governorships in New Jersey and Virginia, rocking the electoral landscape.
Sound familiar? No, I'm not talking about President Obama, his $787 billion "stimulus", cap-and-trade, health care "reform", and the recent victories of Bob McDonnell in Virginia and Chris Christie in New Jersey. Instead, I'm referring to 1993, and the first year of President Bill Clinton. The similarities are striking, yet it seems that Democratic politicians and strategists failed to learn the lessons of history — and were thus doomed to repeat it.
The lesson becomes even more stark and undeniable when you consider what happened in yesterday's special election in Massachusetts — yes, Massachusetts (!) — where Republican Scott Brown upended Democrat Martha Coakley in the special election to fill the rest of the term of the late Ted Kennedy's Senate seat. There are differences — the "ObamaCare" plans have actually passed the House and Senate (Clinton's plan collapsed without a vote in the House and Senate), and prior to the election Democrats in 2009 held a filibuster-proof majority. There was no special, dramatic race in early 1994 like we have in Massachusetts. But the parallels are certainly easily observable.
One interesting aspect is that when Obama came to office in January 2009 along with a Congress that had strengthened its Democratic majorities since taking the House and Senate in 2006, health care reform was discussed as a major priority. The line from the Democratic leadership was that a 1993-like failure on achieving government-centric "reform" couldn't be repeated, else the Democrats would suffer at the ballot box in a similar manner to that seen in the Republican takeover of Congress in the sea-change elections of 1994. So, to ensure that something — anything — passed, they begged, cajoled, bargained, and arm-twisted their way to slim votes.
Yet it appears that the Democrats learned the wrong lesson from 1993's failed attempt: the voting public wasn't punishing Democrats in 1994 for not passing a Big Government health insurance bill, they were punishing Democrats for attempting it in the first place. One need only to look at Senator-elect Brown's poll numbers versus Martha Coakley to see that as the votes on health insurance in the Senate began passing, as the deals became public knowledge and the public approval of the bill dropped, Brown surged. Even normally reliable Democratic voters in Massachusetts — and certainly independents — did not like what they were seeing. Now, while many Democrats in DC are urging caution, some are saying that (somehow) the election of a candidate whose top promise to oppose the current version of national health care "reform" is a sign to Congress and the President that the public wants them to pass... the current version of national health care "reform".
Brown also made a shrewd political point in opposing the "ObamaCare" (promising to be the deciding vote against it in the reconciliation vote): Massachusetts already has its own version of "universal coverage". To pass a national bill would be to have Bay Staters subsidizing health care for residents of other states. Thus, he made himself a viable option to people on both sides of the debate: hate the Massachusetts plan, and you certainly wouldn't want to see it implemented on a federal level;; love the Massachusetts plan, and you still get to keep it without raising your taxes to provide it to someone else.
Will the last chapter of the original story be duplicated in 2010 — will Republicans ride a tide of "change" to control of both Houses of Congress? Or will the Democrats take the proper lesson from the "'Scott" heard round the world" in Massachusetts (tip of the hat to the Young Republicans National Federation for that one) and adjust their course? We will, of course, see in the coming weeks and months, as Democratic leaders deal with health care, cap-and-trade, jobs, and other issues. But in the meantime, it certainly seems like we've seen this movie before.
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