Despite all of the GOP bluster about repealing the Affordable Care Act, the data suggests that such a campaign could boomerang badly, according to TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira, who explains in his latest ‘Public Opinion Snapshot,’

…Not only are they likely to fail to achieve their goal but they also are likely to become very unpopular in the process. This is because most parts of the Affordable Care Act, or ACA, are actually quite popular and any attempt to repeal them could very well turn public sentiment against the repeal advocates.
Consider these data from the latest Kaiser Health Tracking Poll. The poll tested public support for repealing six elements of ACA and found strong majority support for retaining five of the six elements: tax credits for small business to offer health care coverage (78 percent keep to 18 percent repeal); closing the Medicare prescription drug doughnut hole (72 percent keep to 22 percent repeal); providing financial help for those who don’t get insurance through their jobs (71 percent keep to 24 percent repeal); no denial of insurance coverage for pre-existing conditions (71 percent keep to 26 percent repeal); and increasing the Medicare payroll tax on upper-income Americans (54 percent keep to 39 percent repeal). Only the individual mandate was not supported.

Many repeal advocates also have doubts, explains Teixeira:

…Even among those who say all or parts of ACA should be repealed support runs strong for four of the six elements tested: 68 percent for the small business subsidies; 62 percent for prohibiting denial of coverage due to pre-existing conditions; 60 percent for closing the doughnut hole; and 55 percent for individual subsidies.

Given the aforementioned data, It seems likely that calls for HCR repeal will morph into “amend, don’t repeal” among many Republicans who value their jobs. As Teixeira explains, “Repealing ACA means taking away key reforms that have very broad public support. And that is likely to displease the public greatly no matter what conservatives think.”

it would be hard to pin-point the exact moment the Republicans pilfered the term “deficit-reduction” from the economic policy lexicon as their exclusive property. But it was one of those rip-offs that was made possible by the lack of vigilance by the victim, i.e. the Democrats. Too often, it seems, Dems have been complicit in framing a “Jobs vs. Deficit-reduction” false choice.
The meme successfully propagated by the GOP is that the only way Dems can balance budgets or reduce deficits is by levying taxes. The subtext is that Dems just don’t know how to cut government spending.
In Friday’s New York Times, David Leonhardt has an article, “OK, You Fix the Budget,” which serves as a backgrounder for the Times’ PDF widget “Get a Pencil: You’re Tackling the Deficit.” As Leonhardt explains,

…Rather than making recommendations, we are laying out a menu of major options, so that readers can come up with their own plan. We have received help along the way from the deficit panel, from Congressional and White House aides and from liberal, conservative and centrist budget analysts. The deficit puzzle on The Times’s Web site is the result.
The ultimate goal is to help you judge the deficit proposals that are now emerging. Do you think they cut spending too much and should raise taxes more? Or the reverse? Are they too aggressive or too meek on military spending? How will they affect income inequality? How might they help or hurt economic growth?

It’s a useful exercise in that it encourages Dems to think about the real-world choices that can help formulate a responsible budget, and more importantly shows that there are various menus of choices involving both budget cuts and tax policy that are acceptable to progressive as well as moderate Dems.
It also underscores the reality that, the non-starter Simpson-Bowles proposals notwithstanding, President Obama did not cave to conservatives simply by convening the deficit panel. Rather, he opened a new arena of progressive-conservative debate and struggle.

Mike Lux’s HuffPo post, “The Re-Positioning Tango,” which makes a good companion piece to Ed Kilgore’s “Matt Bai’s False Choices” at TDS, offers useful insights for Democrats in developing a sound strategy to rebuild our congressional majorities. Rather than cave on progressive principles to appease political moderates/centrists, Lux argues for helping specific groups in the Democratic base whose participation in the midterms declined, as did their support for Democratic candidates, including:

* Voters under 30 were 11% of the electorate in 2010 compared to 18% in 2008, and their margin shrunk from +29 D to +17 D.
* Unmarried women had about the same % of the electorate as in 2008, but their margin slid from +40 to +16. White unmarried women actually voted Republican for the first time since I’ve been reading exit poll data.
* Although their loyalty to Democrats only dropped slightly, African-Americans dropped from 13% of the electorate down to 10%
* Union households’ Democratic margin dropped 8 points, but even more importantly their share of the electorate dropped 6 in comparison to 2006.

Lux adds,

So before you accept the Third Way/Matt Bai argument that the base doesn’t matter much because they voted for us anyway, be extremely careful. The kind of numbers sited in the 4 bullets above, with both smaller shares of the electorate and a smaller % for Democrats in some of the most loyally Democratic demographic groups, is exactly the kind of shift that will cost you elections…this ain’t about positioning, folks, this is about giving all those folks — base and swing voters alike — some solutions on this economy. With the fiscal stimulus being politically dead as a doorknob, that solution is gone. We are going to have to come up with other approaches to help the middle class and those struggling to get into it

Lux, author of “The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be,” goes on to discuss substantive reforms to protect jobs and stabilize the housing market, which is causing so much insecurity. He concludes, “Democrats can win the next election, but it won’t be by engaging the same stale debates about positioning ourselves in the middle, whatever that means. The way we do it is pretty straightforward: deliver real economic benefits to the working and middle class voters hardest hit by this economy. ”

TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira crunches some interesting numbers in his latest ‘Public Opinion Snapshot,’ and in the process shreds the conservatives’ most treasured myths about the November 2nd ‘mandate.’ As Teixeira explains, conservatives are spinning a dubious interpretation, in light of the more telling statistics:

…For them, the 2010 election was all about voters embracing conservative ideas on the economy, health care, and tax cuts. But the 2010 exit polls tell a different story.
Only 23 percent of voters blamed President Barack Obama for today’s economic problems. Instead, they blamed either Wall Street (35 percent) or President George W. Bush (29 percent).
Nor was the election a repudiation of the new health care reform law. Even among a midterm electorate with an abnormally conservative composition, about as many said they wanted to see the law remain as is or be expanded (47 percent) as said they wanted it repealed (48 percent).
Voters weren’t embracing the conservative position on tax cuts, either. A 52 percent majority of voters wanted to either keep only the Bush tax cuts for those with less than $250,000 or let them all expire compared to 39 percent who wanted to keep all the tax cuts.

A rather shaky mandate, indeed. Teixeira attributes GOP gains, more realistically to the economy, the structure of the mid term turnout and the vulnerable seats in conservative areas, factors which are assessed in clarifying detail in Teixeira’s and John Halpin’s new memo for the Center for American Progress Action Fund, “Election Results Fueled by Jobs Crisis and Voter Apathy Among Progressives,” recommended for those who prefer sober data-driven analysis to hyperactive GOP spin.

William Saletan has a perspective-stretcher at Slate.com that might get a more receptive reading as a year-ender, but also makes a point worth considering, post-mid terms. As Saletan writes in “Pelosi’s Triumph: Democrats didn’t lose the battle of 2010. They won it,”

…In the national exit poll, voters were split on health care. Unemployment is at nearly 10 percent. Democrats lost a lot of seats that were never really theirs, and those who voted against the bill lost at a higher rate than did those who voted for it. But if health care did cost the party its majority, so what? The bill was more important than the election.
I realize that sounds crazy. We’ve become so obsessed with who wins or loses in politics that we’ve forgotten what the winning and losing are about. Partisans fixate on punishing their enemies in the next campaign. Reporters, in the name of objectivity, refuse to judge anything but the Election Day score card. Politicians rationalize their self-preservation by imagining themselves as dynasty builders. They think this is the big picture.
They’re wrong. The big picture isn’t about winning or keeping power. It’s about using it.

Saletan quotes former Bush speechwriter David Frum to bring it home:

Legislative majorities come and go. This healthcare bill is forever. A win in November is very poor compensation for this debacle now. … No illusions please: This bill will not be repealed. Even if Republicans scored a 1994 style landslide in November, how many votes could we muster to re-open the “doughnut hole” and charge seniors more for prescription drugs? How many votes to re-allow insurers to rescind policies when they discover a pre-existing condition? How many votes to banish 25 year olds from their parents’ insurance coverage?

Saletan concedes that there will undoubtedly be amendments to the HCR law. He may be understating the case. Boehner and his minions may try to sabotage it, and with some success — but not without a price.
Saletan adds, “Most bills aren’t more important than elections. This one was.” He predicts, optimistically,

A party that loses a House seat can win it back two years later, as Republicans just proved. But a party that loses a legislative fight against a middle-class health care entitlement never restores the old order. Pretty soon, Republicans will be claiming the program as their own. Indeed, one of their favorite arguments against this year’s health care bill was that it would cut funding for Medicare. Now they’re pledging to rescind those cuts. In 30 years, they’ll be accusing Democrats of defunding Obamacare.

As for Speaker Pelosi’s legacy:

…By the thinnest of margins, they rammed a bill through. They weren’t going to get another opportunity for a very long time. It cost them their majority, and it was worth it…And that’s not counting financial regulation, economic stimulus, college lending reform, and all the other bills that became law under Pelosi. So spare me the tears and gloating about her so-called failure. If John Boehner is speaker of the House for the next 20 years, he’ll be lucky to match her achievements.

Not to diminish the consequences of the electoral rout Dems have just experienced and the challenges that lie ahead in rebuilding a congressional majority. Those for whom electioneering is the end goal of politics will not find much comfort in Saletan’s take. But under the leadership of Speaker Pelosi, as much, if not more than President Obama, House Democrats have enacted reforms that will save countless lives and make American society better for millions. As time passes the 2010 mid terms will be viewed in context as a political skirmish, but it’s likely that the 2010 HCR law will go down in history as a landmark reform.