How Health Care Impacts 2010?

This will be quick, because the answer is rather simple. At this point, there are two choices for the Democrats, finish reform or drop it. How does this impact 2010? No one is exactly sure. The proposed plan polls poorly, although the individual provisions poll well individually. One would imagine that if the provisions themselves are popular, then reform will overall be a boost for Democratic support. Yet none of that will have taken effect by the time folks begin making decisions for 2010 elections.

So how does health care impact 2010 elections? Could go either way. There is one question I can answer: will it play better for Democrats to get reform finished or drop it all together and start over? Guaranteed, at this point in the game you have "already paid for lunch, you might as well eat it" as Chris Hayes from The Nation said.

Whether or not passage of health reform will help the 2010 elections is unclear, but failure will clearly have a strongly negative impact.

Will 2010 Look Like 2008?

As we studied the numbers after the 2009 election, one thing stood out glaringly: the Obama voters had stayed home. Nate Silver showed us that the electorate that came out that day in Virginia had voted for McCain by 51-43, a stark difference from 2008's actual VA results.

Who knows whether or not this election was a sign of things to come, or just a reinforcement of the trend that when a new President takes over, the party suffers in the next election.

But if Democrats want 2010 to look anything like 2008, they better take a cue from this recent bombshell of a poll:

A new national poll finds that fully one third of Democratic voters say that they’re “less likely” to vote in 2010 if Congress doesn’t pass a public option, underscoring the possibility that dropping the provision seriously risks dampening the Dem base’s enthusiasm.

Why am I so sure that Republicans and Blue Dogs will find a way to say that this poll shows that the President should run to the center on health care? All I can say is, polls have shown that for the last several years health care has been the most important issue amongst liberal voters, so I am not shocked in the slightest bit by the results of this poll.