POLITICS NOVEMBER 9, 2011
-
Read Later
READ LATERAvailable only to subscribers. SUBSCRIBE TODAY
-
Listen
ARTICLE AUDIO
- Font Size
Tuesday night’s election results illuminate the terrain on which the 2012 election will be fought. The American people want government to address their problems, but not at the cost of excessive intrusion in their lives. They recoil from ideologically motivated attacks on workers and on women. While they are open to a moderate brand of conservatism, they will reject a harder-edge and more extreme version.
In Virginia, Republicans picked up at least half a dozen seats in the General Assembly and appear poised to take control of the senate, which would give them unified control of the state government. Governor Bob McDonnell’s low-key style has played well with the electorate, which regards him more as a pragmatic problem-solver than as a partisan ideologue. For example, while his approach to transportation left many Democrats and northern Virginians dissatisfied, he did not reject an expanded role for the public sector. He framed the state’s all-consuming transportation debate as a matter of means rather than ends—addressing the backlog with a long-term bond issue rather than immediate tax increases—a characterization that most Virginians seemed to accept. At least for now, his moderate conservatism defines the center of Virginia politics, which is good news for national Republicans such as Mitt Romney and not such good news for the Obama team.
In Ohio, the electorate delivered an instructive split decision. On the one hand, more than six in ten Ohio voters rebuked Republican governor Bob Kasich for attacking the state’s public employees. While surveys showed that voters favored proposals to make state workers contribute more for health care and retirement, they rejected moves to strip them of collective bargaining rights, a measure favored by hard-core conservatives but not more mainstream voters. Kasich, they judged, had gone too far, and they responded with a stunning reprimand.
But by an even larger margin, these same voters also endorsed a referendum that would block the state from implementing an individual mandate like the one contained in President Obama’s health reform bill. Every survey I’ve seen shows the same thing: While Americans endorse major provisions of the bill such as guaranteed issue of insurance regardless of preexisting conditions, they reject the individual mandate and want to see it repealed. The margin in favor of repealing the mandate was 67 to 27 in the March 2011 Kaiser Family Foundation poll (although additional facts and arguments did move respondents in a more favorable direction). An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll from June of this year showed that while 31 percent were more likely to vote in favor of a presidential candidate who supported requiring all Americans to have or purchase health insurance, 50 percent would be less likely. In 1996, Bill Clinton’s signature domestic policy achievement—welfare reform—was a large plus in his successful reelection campaign. The Affordable Care Act seems unlikely to play that role for Barack Obama next year.
So the message from two key states—one the symbol of Obama’s new majority, the other of the classic battleground—is much the same. While the voters are open to moderate conservatism, they won’t follow along if conservatives go too far. But when they think liberal governance goes too far in the other direction, they’ll reject that too. Despite the polarization of today’s party politics, there is still a center of gravity in the electorate that isn’t entirely comfortable with either party and wants to see less confrontation and more compromise. They’re seeking a point of equipoise, which today’s political system is poorly structured to provide.
William Galston is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a contributing editor for The New Republic.
Creative Commons Photo Credit: Wisconsin AFL-CIO
12 comments
Let's assume the electorate is informed, and understands that repealing the mandate while requiring insurers to cover pre-existing conditions may put the insurers in a death spiral (because only sick people will choose to buy insurance). I say "may" because I am not convinced: are insurers so incompetent and unimaginative as to not be able to design and market their products to appeal to the young and healthy? It could be that the electorate agrees with me. Or it could be that the electorate is counting on a death spiral so that the private insurers (unpopular with providers as well as insureds) are replaced with a universal public health care plan. The alternative, to an informed electorate, is that the electorate is just dumb as a brick, and is seeking that non-existent "point of equipoise".
- rayward
November 9, 2011 at 9:19am
I call horseshit like Ray. And if I had a referendum stating that insurance companies can opt out of guaranteed issue and were allowed to drop coverage due to pre-existing conditions as a result of ending the mandate, what would the results have been then? How smart can anyone imagine the people in Ohio are anyway? If they had any brains they wouldn't live in Ohio.
- blackton
November 9, 2011 at 10:04am
Galston returning to form. Just when I was wondering about him, too. Of course Americans, when individually polled, favour a right to free ride. This is also why the Bush tax cuts did not lead to national insurrection. Would you rather pay up front now while you're healthy or save money now and find yourself in penury? 73% of people say they'd rather save money (see! Americans are conservative!), even though 90% of the unluckily afflicted say they'd rather have paid the bill for fire protection (see! Americans believe in big government!). In a democratic republic, the government is the collective will. The collective will is what ties Odysseus to the mast so that he doesn't do something irresponsible and cause ruination for the whole crew. Libertarians believe people have evolved to be bloodless, utility maximizers ever after selfish profit. No amount of data will convince them they are wrong, because they are captive to a newer and more pervasive phenomenon than social cooperation: the capacity to believe BS in spite of evidence.
- chaitless
November 9, 2011 at 10:25am
But here is the thing: the opinion of this "center of gravity" is incoherent, demanding irreconcilable things from the government, willing the ends but not the means. In health care reform, for example, the only way that some provisions work, such as guaranteed issue of insurance regardless of preexisting conditions, without making health care costs prohibitively expensive and beyond the reach of many people, is by imposing an individual mandate. This is similar to the referendum issue in California, the majority always votes for more services and less taxes, regardless of the fact that this is impossible.
- ybrafman
November 9, 2011 at 10:35am
Talk about reading tea leaves. Judging the inclinations of the nation from these particular data points is like evaluating the integrity of my local water system by seeing if there are any leaks in my apartment. Want valid conclusions? Take a real poll on the issues under discussion, don't extrapolate from a few results in an off-year election, especially the initiatives and referendums that happened to get on the ballot. And yes, the health care referendum is bs. Of course people don't like the mandate, and they like the freebies. A better question would have been whether people want the mandate along with all the other stuff that they like about the law, or whether they want to do without both. Since the latter without the former isn't really an option (at least not without substantial tax increases, so people wind up paying for it one way or the other), asking about the mandate alone is pretty silly.
- dsimon
November 9, 2011 at 10:40am
I go with rayward's alternative. The electorate is dumb as a brick. Most of it doesn't know what chucking the mandate means: the taxpayers and the insured pay for the care of those who refuse to buy insurance. So let young people refuse to buy insurance, but write a new mandate: they pay for every penny of their medical costs and no bankruptcy allowed. With the mandate the government would be helping low-income people with their insurance premiums, sometimes with the whole amount. To refuse to buy insurance just to be an anti-government ass is to stick other people with your bills. Outlaws are not always existential upholders of American individualism. Sometimes they're just cowardly weasels.
- magboy47.
November 9, 2011 at 11:14am
Thank you Mr. Galston, especially for your insights and report about Virginia - a real bellwether for the GOP to stop demanding ideological purity for their enxt presidential nominee. Without the turnout numbers in ohio, more difficult for me to agree with your conclusions. Excellent conclusion: "...there is still a center of gravity in the electorate that isn’t entirely comfortable with either party and wants to see less confrontation and more compromise. They’re seeking a point of equipoise, which today’s political system is poorly structured to provide." memo to Nancy Pelosi and Grover Norquist!!!!!!
- K2K
November 9, 2011 at 12:14pm
So, has anyone done the following poll? A) Provide health insurance at affordable rates to everyone, even if they have a pre-existing condition AND require everyone to purchase health insurance, or B) Deny health insurance to anyone with a pre-existing condition BUT do not require anyone to purchase health insurance. If faced with a stark choice, I'm betting most people will vote for A. Then again, most people are pretty dumb.
- timteeter
November 9, 2011 at 1:56pm
K2K: "memo to Nancy Pelosi and Grover Norquist!!!!!!" I keep asking what Pelosi and the Democrats have done or proposed that has been so radical, and I never get a response. And they've offered compromise after compromise only to get just about zero Republican votes. Just because little is getting done doesn't mean both sides are to blame. It's a false equivalency.
- dsimon
November 9, 2011 at 2:35pm
I am SO tired of reading this guy's columns. Can't they relegate him to some deep, dark recess of the TNR website, where he can hang out with fellow Oldsters, Doom-and-Gloomsters Peretz& Leon?
- Tilghman79
November 9, 2011 at 4:16pm
ONLY a severe crisis has any chance of producing real change--- and that change could be Progressive or radical right. In the absence of a severe crisis, you get conservative right moving towards radical right. So pray for a crisis pdq. The fall of the EU wold do it. It's probably too late to get anything but conservative or radical right government in 2012, so plan for 2016.The worst secenario is if BHO is re-elected-- then you get conservative right for 4 years followed by God-knows how many years of Radical Right to replace the Dem equivalent of Herbert Hoover as far as inability to deal with economic crises created by an implacable opposition abetted/enabled by BHO.
- drofnats1
November 9, 2011 at 5:03pm
C'mon drof. Hoover didn't get re-elected. Ditto K2K. dsimon, I think the period between '08 and '10 is rife with examples of high-handed behavior by the all-Democrat government. You may argue that the Repubs were already set on kamikaze tactics, and you may be right if you do. IMHO, there were deals to be had on healthcare, entitlements, bailouts, a jobs bill, bank reform and more, but the Reid-Pelosi regime preferred to ram legislation down their throats using the majority.
- Robert Powell
November 13, 2011 at 2:08pm