Poll dance.

Looks like the bottom is falling out of the legislative health insurance reform effort. Oh, there may be a bill, but the political legs are getting very wobbly. All of the compromises and fall-backs the left has agreed to over the past year have been painted as too radical for the public at large, even though the public at large broadly supports elements like the "public option" and expansion of Medicare to people under 65. In other words, the majority of people in the United States think there should be some kind of government provided health insurance available to everyone, not just retirees, veterans, and people in the United States Congress... but Joe Lieberman and 40 G.O.P. senators don't want it, so it's not going to happen. Small wonder that more recent polling by one of the major networks and the Wall Street Journal shows a majority now against the health care legislation under consideration in the Senate. Someone should poll Lieberman and make sure that he's mostly happy now, since that's all that seems to matter.

The interesting part is that, in announcing the poll results, the newscasters don't seem to make that connection. We are presented with evidence of shifting public opinion but no real insight on why the shift has taken place. Why should this news warm the cockles of conservatives' hearts? The public is unhappy with the legislation that they have been instrumental in bringing about. They have consistently demagogued on this issue from the very beginning. And with their titular ally Joe Lieberman - a man who avidly supported their presidential ticket last year and addressed their national convention, Zell Miller style - they have ensured that this legislation will be, at best, weak-as-dishwater reform, and, at worst, a sop to the insurance companies to the tune of millions of new customers and a federal license to print money, in essence. That is something people clearly don't want. And that makes the conservatives happy. (In fact, it's very similar to the type of "reform" McCain proposed during the campaign and what Romney implemented in Massachusetts.) They see it as Obama's failure, and that to them means success.

Okay, so... look at the poll again. Something like 55% of those surveyed say the country is going in the "wrong direction." What the hell does that mean? Wasn't it going in the wrong direction last year as well, under Bush? Are we to assume that this means that a majority wants to elect Republicans, the folks who work tirelessly for the failure of the kind of health reform most people support (e.g. single payer, public option, Medicare expansion)? If this is like most political polls, it's just a simple question - is the country moving in the right direction: yes, no, undecided. It seems as though, as with support for the war, there is an expectation on the part of those being polled that all one needs to do is vote every two years, sit back, fold your arms, and wait for the change to come in the mail. A portion of that is, I would guess, a function of how disconnected most respondents feel with the policy.... Yeah, war is bad, but I don't have to fight it, so go for it. Yeah, being grievously ill without health coverage is bad, but it probably won't happen to me, so leave everything the way it is.

Part of it, though, almost has to be growing cynicism with a political system that seems incapable of translating the will of the electorate into solid, progressive policy.

luv u,

jp