Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Health care bill an anchor or a float for Democrats?

Incumbents’ reelection hopes tied to unpopular signature issue

Reid

Manuel Balce Ceneta / Associated Press

Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada is joined by fellow Democratic senators while speaking about health care Nov. 18 in Washington.

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Rep. Dina Titus speaks at the College of Southern Nevada in Henderson Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2009.

On first take the latest polling from Nevada offered a dim outlook for Democrats’ political fortunes: They are struggling to pass health care legislation in Congress that does not appear to have robust support at home.

A slim majority, 53 percent of those polled, opposed what was referred to as “President Barack Obama’s proposal to reform health care.”

Just 39 percent approved.

The legislation that has occupied so much political space in Washington as Obama’s domestic priority is complicating the electoral futures of the state’s Democrats on the Hill.

Both Sen. Harry Reid, the majority leader, and Democratic Rep. Dina Titus, a freshman in the House, face disapproval for their actions in support the health care bill, according to recent polling for the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Both are facing difficult reelection bids in 2010.

“Health care numbers are definitely a problem for Democrats,” said Tim Sahd, who analyzes House races at National Journal’s Hotline. “They’re suffering right now.”

Part of the problem is the information vacuum, since the Democratic health care bill remains a work in progress and so much of the party’s energy in Congress is focused on resolving disputes among its members.

“There’s just no bill to sell,” Sahd said.

Republican opponents of the bill have not hesitated to fill the void. In Nevada, television ads are running nonstop on both sides of the issue, including many critical of health care reform.

Ted Jelen, a UNLV political science professor, said that by failing to adequately lead the conversation, Democrats “screwed it up completely. They allowed the Republicans to define the terms of the debate, especially in Nevada. They allowed that to go on.”

Yet a closer look at the polling results offers another view of the potential political landscape on the health care issue in the campaign year ahead.

A vast majority of Nevadans want some sort of reform of the existing health care status quo, even as they differ on the extent to which the current system should be altered. Just 9 percent told pollsters that nothing should be done to the current health care system, and 16 percent said the system is basically sound with only minor changes needed.

That robust showing for reform suggests that if Congress passes a bill that is signed into law by the president, Democrats in campaign mode will have an opportunity to build support for their efforts.

Additionally, in several areas the polling found that voters remained undecided on the bill and the actions being taken by those in Congress.

For example, although 39 percent of voters disapproved of Reid’s efforts to pass health care reform in the Senate, 11 percent were unsure. Similarly, 41 percent of those polls approved of Titus’ support for the bill in the House and 47 percent disapproved; a sizable 12 percent remained unsure.

You can expect a full-scale campaign-style effort if health care reform becomes law as Democrats highlight the popular parts of the bill — such as the ban on insurance companies’ ability to deny coverage for preexisting conditions or the Medicare reforms that reduce prescription drug costs for seniors.

The massive legislation that has passed the House and is being debated in the Senate aims to lower the nation’s overall spending on health care while providing coverage for 30 million uninsured, including 500,000 in Nevada.

If Democrats can hold their supporters and capture those who are undecided, they could create a route to victory. “There’s certainly time to clean things up,” Sahd said.

Yet midterm congressional elections are rarely kind to the party in power, and 2010 is shaping up to be a brutal one for the Democrats, who control both the House and Senate, as well as the White House.

The Democratic dominance of the 2006 and 2008 election cycles has come to a close as voters nationally show discontent with incumbency. Voters just last year preferred Democrats to Republicans in Congress by double-digit margins.

Now, the two parties pull almost evenly among voters — more a sign of displeasure with Democrats than of Republican ascendancy, experts said.

“Republicans are enjoying very much a bounce at this point,” Sahd said. “The question is how much. Right now, it seems like a wave is building out there.”

Democrats are also losing independent voters, who are crucial in Nevada, traditionally a swing state.

The Nevada polling indicated that among independents, a must-have group of voters for both Reid and Titus, slim majorities disapproved of their actions in support of health care reform, showing the difficult electoral path ahead.

Reid’s tough reelection bid is well known, as the senator’s poll numbers remain in the basement at 38 percent approval — even after his campaign spent heavily over the past month in a series of early television ads to reintroduce him to Nevadans.

Titus faces a difficult reelection because of the makeup of her politically split district in Southern Nevada. The newspaper’s poll showed her running even in a potential matchup with former state Sen. Joe Heck, one of two Republicans so far in a primary battle, and only slightly besting another potential Republican challenger, businessman Rob Lauer.

Republican strategist Ryan Erwin in Nevada said Democrats have a tough job selling a health care proposal that relies on persuading voters that “the government is better at making decisions than they are.”

“I can’t imagine any educated voter is going to buy that,” said Erwin, a Heck consultant.

But Titus thinks voters have been bombarded by opposition claims, including the now-debunked death panels, that prove not to be true.

Titus is already taking steps to reverse the narrative by marketing the health care legislation to her voters in the first of two mailings that will arrive soon in homes.

“We need to continue to talk to our constituents about the bill and about the good things that are in it,” Titus spokesman Andrew Stoddard said. “There’s room to move the needle on that.”

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