Advertisement

Hanging Together or Hanging Separately on Health Care

If I’m a member of congress, there’s definitely one way of looking at the latest Washington Post numbers that makes a “yes” vote on health reform look dicey. 48 percent approve of Barack Obama’s handling of the issue (32 percent strongly) and 48 percent disapprove (38 percent strongly). Another way of looking at it, however, is that partisan politics is a zero sum game, and it’s a game Obama is clearly winning:

I think this supports the idea that the smartest move, politically, for a nervous Democrat is to hope everyone kind of puts their head down and just plows into the gaps in the defensive line as aggressively as they can. The public has some doubts about the president’s approach, but insofar as this becomes a polarized partisan debate, the Democrats have the bigger half of the country with them.

Advertisement