Compared with earlier presidents, Obama focused his case less on helping the uninsured and more on providing those with coverage greater leverage against their insurers. That shift was especially evident in his final drive toward passage.
And yet, polling just before the bill’s approval showed that most white Americans believed that the legislation would primarily benefit the uninsured and the poor, not people like them. In a mid-March Gallup survey, 57 percent of white respondents said that the bill would make things better for the uninsured, and 52 percent said that it would improve conditions for low-income families. But only one-third of whites said that it would benefit the country overall — and just one-fifth said that it would help their own family.
You can use these numbers to make any kind of argument. You could say that the majority of whites think that health care reform will help low-income people but they just don’t care. Or, you could argue that nearly half of whites refuse to acknowledge that access to health care will actually help people. The most important finding in the recent polling is that whites who have no college education are the most skeptical about health care reform even though they are the main beneficiaries. They tend to work jobs that lack insurance coverage and they pay higher prices in the individual insurance market (or they go without any insurance at all).
Brownstein says that the low-education whites (who were most resistant to Obama’s campaign) think the reforms are transferring wealth to minorities while the stimulus and bank bailout are transferring wealth up to bankers. They are conditioned to think that the government won’t help them. Changing that perception won’t happen overnight, even if they do eventually realize that Obama has done more for them than any president since Lyndon Johnson. For one thing, a lot of low-income whites are now eligible for Medicaid, but think Medicaid is something blacks and immigrants receive. In other words, they might benefit, but they’ll resent the help they get.
These voters are totally unpersuaded by the moral case for health care reform, but they are receptive to sticking it to the insurance corporations. That’s why the public option was consistently the most popular element of the president’s proposals. For all the cries of ‘socialism,’ the charge only stuck when it meant helping black and brown folk. When it meant that you didn’t have to buy private insurance, people actually liked the idea.
A lot of bloggers told the Dems that it was all good to pass reform, but people had to like it. They don’t like this reform because it doesn’t have a public option. You can fix that now, while you have the majorities to do it, or you can take an unnecessary beat-down for it in November. In the longer term, people will understand the truth about these reforms and embrace them and those that protect them. But, not yet. Not now. Stick it to the corporations, on the public option, on the financial reform bill, on anything and everything, and these voters will begin to believe that you are on their side. The Republicans will always appeal to their bigotry, fears, and class-resentment. We don’t want to fight for those sentiments. But, when we do things to help these folks, we ought to make sure they know who helped them and how.
