Posted by
Andrews on Tuesday, August 11, 2009 6:15:02 PM
I know it is a bad idea to call a race before it is over, but it appears that backers of ObamaCare are not feeling very confident about its chances. How else to explain their need to hire "grassroots" activists to drum up support? Or their worry about people disrupting townhall meetings?
Now, normally, if an issue were popular, and the opposition were disrupting meetings, politicians would be painting those causing the disruptions as brown shirts trying to keep the public voice from being heard. But the left is not even pretending that is the case here. Even they cannot pretend the disruptions are just a handful of lunatics. They know the polls as well as anyone, and know that, while they may not be causing disruption, a majority of the voters have serious worries about health care reform. And so, rather than try to score points on their opponents' disruptions, they have the SEIU arranging disruptions of their own.
That does not bode well for the chances of health care reform this year or next. After all, if it is too unpopular to pass in 2009, it certainly has no chance in an election year like 2010.Of course, that leaves 2011, but I have a feeling that if Obama can't pass any more of his agenda this year, then he will not be in a position in 2011 to push through healthcare reform.
POSTSCRIPT
Of course there is always the chance that, despite the bailout, cap and trade, inflation and other mistakes that the economy is still strong enough to recover on its own, and Obama may try to reap the benefits of that coincidence in 2011. In fact, if he is paralyzed by the Democrat uprising I have been predicting for some time ("
WSJ Agrees With Me","
Percpetion Is Reality") then he probably won't get much passed in the next few months, and, as a result, the economy may recover somewhat. But then again, as I argued in "
Overlooking the Obvious", that will simply open the door to all the postponed consequences of his inflationary spending. So I doubt the economy will be doing much better before 2012 at the earliest, and even then we will likely have to sit through another deflationary crisis before we see daylight again.
POSTSCRIPT II
My comments about SEIU and hiring grassroots activists come from articles cited in today's
Best of the Web.