Texas Insider Report: AUSTIN Texas With some four months to go before Novembers election and Republicans set to make health care the frontline issue the Obama Campaign appears to be pursuing a wishful thinking strategy wishing the presidents signature domestic achievement goes away
now that the Supreme Court has delivered what they hope is a final answer to quote White House Chief of Staff Jacob Lew.
I dont think the American people want to have this debate again Lew said on Fox News Sunday reflecting the lets move on approach.
But the Republican Party clearly does intend to have this debate all the way into November. Lews tepid talking-points are a warning sign that the White House is surrendering the message war on a central issue that even Obama partisans admit was poorly marketed both before and after Affordable Care Act was signed into law in 2010.
Already
ACAs opponents with their flair for the simplistic are aggressively portraying the Supreme Court justification of the individual mandate based on Congress taxing powers as a furtive middle-class tax increase introduced by Obama. And as we have seen happen again and again--notably when Obamas 2009 stimulus plan was portrayed as runaway big government rather than
what it mainly was an effort to prevent a Depression -- it is the GOP narrative that will sink in unless it is aggressively countered with a powerful marketing message.
A Pew Research Center study also recently concluded that the
Democrats consistently failed to do this last time saying the language and framing of the issue favored by the ACA bills Republican critics was far more prevalent in the news coverage.
However the opportunity to resell the ACA now proudly referred to by both sides as ObamaCare exists.
A new Reuters/Ipsos poll indicates rising support for the law since the Supreme Courts decision. And as my former Newsweek colleague Geoffrey Cowley one of the most astute health-care journalists in the country points out polls consistently show that more Americans oppose the Affordable Care Act than support it -- not because theyve evaluated and rejected it but because they dont understand it.
Just as important Obama really has no choice but to mount a selling job extraordinaire. Beyond Joe Bidens somewhat tongue-in-cheek line -- Bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive -- the presidents campaign doesnt have much of a positive narrative to sell especially on the economy. Indeed its something of a mystery why the Obamaites are so eager to return to that subject.
At this point based on the latest unemplyment & economic growth numbers hes likely to head into the fall with unemployment still above 8 as it has been now for a record 41 months (it was 7.8
when Obama took office).
As Cowley puts it: If the president can use the Supreme Courts ruling to reassert his own gifts as a storyteller -- and his supporters can spark the kind of social-media uprising that helped elect him -- health care reform may yet have a chance.
And so might Obama -- for a second term.
