Good times last night. I wouldn't call Clinton a great speaker -- he pretty much winged a good bit of his talk -- but it was lively and interesting, and he again demonstrated he's hard to fluster, handling a few hecklers savagely...
Anyhow. He talked about a lot, but I thought I'd related some comments he made about health care reform, seeing as they're, you know, relevant here at this blog...and these are just based on notes I took last night...
Town Hall demonstrations are meant to terrify moderate and conservative Democrats: the GOP isn't strong or relevant enough to defeat bill...
Three hurdles for health care reform: (1) It's complex. Can't explain it easily to voters. (2) The CBO doesn't reckon long-term costs and savings, so the bill's been slammed by its estimates. (3) It's hard to budge the status quo. "People who already have something are certain what they'll lose. People who don't are uncertain about what they'll gain."
Health care reform is not only morally right, it's imperative, politically, for Democrats.
After a bill is signed, approval for the reform will go up because Americans are an optimistic people. After a year or so, when the effects are felt, approval will explode. Get something done.
In one of the more interesting turns in the talk was when Clinton addressed his own efforts at reform. He talked about how "the victors wrote the history" on his efforts, citing two aspects:
-- Claim: The bill was a 1,000-page-+ monstrosity. Complex and unwieldy. Reality: proposed bill was a simplification of existing code on health care, actually cut more than 400 pages from the original law.
--Claim: The effort failed b/c the administration dictated the bill, didn't allow Congress to write it. Reality: House committee chair (Hoyer?) asked the administration to write the bill, b/c he worried that Congressional reps didn't know enough about the issue, and that they'd be picked off one-by-one by lobbyists...
In short, if this effort fails, that's the kiss of death for reform. Those that defeated the bill will write the reasons why. (Right now, that's the Tea Bagger crowd. I imagine the media will say Americans don't want a government insurance solution...)
That is, it's imperative to something passed... |
