Krugman: What not to run on (advice for Republicans)

[ProSense]

What not to run on

Republicans, it seems, are going to run on repealing health care reform. Bad call. They are, I believe, misreading the polling.

It’s true that the health care bill is unpopular. But as many people have pointed out, a significant fraction of those who say they disapprove of the bill disapprove from the left. And more generally, answers to the question “Do you approve of the Senate bill?” are not the same as answers to the question, “Do you want to roll back what’s in the bill?”

Consider Massachusetts. As I’ve pointed out in the past, the MA health reform has low approval ratings — yet 79 percent of the state’s voters want the reform to continue.

There doesn’t seem to be any comparable polling for the national reform. But Kaiser Family Foundation polling suggests that there may be a similar phenomenon at the national level:



People aren’t wildly pro-reform, but they’re more pro than anti, even now. So my guess is that campaigning for repeal is a bad strategy.

And that’s no surprise. The GOP remains convinced of a lot of strange things — notably, that they were punished in the last two elections because of excess spending, which I guarantee you wasn’t a factor at all.

That said, Democrats can believe strange things too. The idea that NAFTA was a big plus for Clinton, coming from Rahm Emanuel of all people, is just too bone-headed for words. Even the timing is totally wrong: NAFTA came before the 1994 disaster.

Health reform, thank heavens, isn’t like NAFTA. It will probably help Democrats, for two reasons: first, because people won’t want it reversed, and second, because this time Democrats actually got something done. My sense about 1994 is that at least one piece of the problem was the sense of Clinton as a hapless incompetent, with the failure of HCR as a key part of the narrative. At least Obama won’t have that problem.

[Hello_Kitty]

1. LOL. Paul Krugman spins more people thinking they won't be better off with HCR as support for it.

He needs to step away from the charts.

But it's nice to see him giving craptastic advice to the GOP for once.

:rofl:

[ProSense]

2. Actually, you're spinning.

Won't make a difference is not worse off. Therefore, he's right. More people believe they will be better off.

[Hello_Kitty]

3. You assume those people like the health care they have?

I wouldn't celebrate the fact that more people think they won't be benefiting from HCR than will. Those numbers are going to get worse when people find out things like how if their employer offers crap-ass insurance, they can't buy into the exchange. Or that the good benefits package they got through collective bargaining is subject to an excise tax.