Pelosi, Obamacare, and Public Opinion
Speaking on ABC’s This Week on Sunday, former Speaker Pelosi was asked by host Christiane Amanpour why the President is “barnstorming the country” trying to sell people on new “stimulus” legislation even though many Democrats have rejected part or all of his “jobs bill.” Pelosi’s response was revealing on many levels:
AMANPOUR: He keeps saying that I — I want the people to push this through, because he doesn’t think it’s going to make it in either the Senate or the House.
PELOSI: It never usually does unless you have public sentiment. I’m fond of saying to anyone who will listen, President Abraham Lincoln said public sentiment is everything. You cannot just persuade people [through] inside maneuvering. You have to have the outside messaging and mobilization so that people know if there’s not — if jobs aren’t created why they’re not created.
These comments are very revealing coming from someone who, when Speaker, rammed 2700 pages of Obamacare legislation through the House – legislation which by Pelosi’s own standard failed to capture public support. It’s not just that a wide range of opinion polls have concluded that the bill, now law, is and remains unpopular – although the chart below my signature illustrates that. It’s that Pelosi herself admitted failure on this front. When Pelosi famously said we had to pass the bill to find out what’s in it, she conceded that, at best, Democrats had failed to inform voters why they needed to support the bill in the months leading up to its enactment – or (more likely) the American people had rejected the Democrat proposals the more they heard about them.
So if Pelosi agrees with Lincoln that “public sentiment is everything,” why did she insist on ramming through a bill that by her own admission the American people either did not understand, did not like, or both? There was certainly a lot of “inside maneuvering” that took place in the days and weeks prior to the legislation’s passage – backroom deals like the Louisiana Purchase, U-CONN, and assorted other gimmicks. But contrary to the former Speaker’s statements on Sunday, listening to what the American people have to say about Obamacare didn’t – and doesn’t – appear to be foremost in any Democrat’s mind.
A final thought: The President’s campaign advisers released a memo today about the President’s new “stimulus” plan, claiming that “the more people know about [it], the more they hear the President talking about it, the more they want Congress to pass the plan.” If that sounds familiar, it’s because Democrats said the EXACT SAME THING about Obamacare: “As people learn about the bill, it’s going to become more and more popular.” The question is, why have Democrats stopped making those claims about Obamacare now? (A hint: It might have something to do with the chart below…)
