As Pete documents, Obama’s magical rhetoric seems to be losing its power. He may be selling, but the public isn’t buying.
Nowhere is this more vividly displayed than on health care. Rick Klein explains:
We’re seeing sticker shock spread through the Capitol. We’re seeing Democrats fight with each other. We’re seeing middle-of-the-night committee votes. We’re seeing the unemployment rate rising. We’re seeing a presidential approval rate falling. We’re seeing a story that just is not meant to be covered hour by hour examined in every ugly detail. President Obama always wanted to connect health care reform to the economy. He’s gotten that wish, but not quite in the way he envisioned.
Remember when Obama was telling us that health-care reform was part of our economic recovery? It never made much sense when unemployment was at 8% and it certainly doesn’t when unemployment is at 9.5%. The bait-and-switch seems to be faltering. (We have an economic crisis so the solution is…. government run health care! Huh?)
Rasmussen shows how stunning is the rejection of ObamaCare:
Just 35% of U.S. voters now support the creation of a government health insurance company to compete with private health insurers. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 50% of voters oppose setting up a government health insurance company as President Obama and congressional Democrats are now proposing in their health care reform plan. Fifteen percent (15%) are undecided. In mid-June, 41% of American adults thought setting up a government health insurance company to compete with private health insurance companies was a good idea, but the identical number (41%) disagreed.
The president is often praised for his oratory. But so far his oratory is not convincing the public — or Congress — that we need a government-run health-care plan. And if he can’t do it in July when his approval rating is still in the mid-50′s, when can he? One can understand the push for health-care reform now. The longer they wait, the least attractive both it and its chief salesman seem.
UPDATE: In an interview this afternoon with Klein, House Democratic Majority Leader Steny Hoyer announced they were “going back to the drawing board” on healthcare. And to boot, he sounded less than certain that a bill would be passed in August. It seems the salesman-in-chief isn’t closing the deal.
