One of the main assumptions of the final weeks of coverage of the congressional debate over healthcare reform was that the public was opposed to the White House plan. But some polling analysis shows that this wasn’t the case. Barry Sussman noted this at the Nieman Watchdog on March 5. A McClatchy/Ipsos poll from late February told the usual tale: 41 percent supported the plan, 47 opposed. Sussman wrote:
But the pollsters went a step further, asking those opposed–509 people in all–if they were against the proposals because they “don’t go far enough to reform healthcare” or because they go too far. Thirty-seven percent said it was because the proposals don’t go far enough.
So a good number of those who answered in the negative were actually saying that they thought the White House was too timid. A subsequent CNN poll asked the same type of follow-up question, and found a similar result–as noted by the blogger Digby (3/24/10), Wolf Blitzer explained it to his CNN colleague Rick Sanchez like this:
Well, you know, when people are asked, we did that poll, CNN Opinion Research Poll, that said, “You like this healthcare bill, or not like it”; we just assumed, a lot of us, that the people who said they didn’t like it didn’t like it because it was too much interference, or too much taxes or whatever.
But if you take a closer look at people who didn’t like it, about 12 percent of those people who said they didn’t like it they didn’t like it because they didn’t think it went far enough. They wanted a single-payer option, they wanted the so-called public option, they didn’t like not from the right, they didn’t like it because it wasn’t left or liberal enough.
That’s how you got 50 percent of the American people who said, “we don’t like this plan.” But only about 40 or 38 percent were the ones who said it was too much government interference.
If reporters had understood and/0r explained this earlier, we could have had a very different debate. Then again, a corporate media that dismissed single-payer and derided the public option as out of the mainstream would be unlikely to do much better.
Of course you’re right, but it is also true that those of us on the left DID oppose the plan, though not for the same reasons that those on the right did.
Actually, the real absurdity of these polls is that, until the day it was passed, there was very little information about EXACTLY WHAT THE PLAN WAS. That’s in part because it wasn’t until late in the process that it was even firmed up. So asking someone if they “supported” or “opposed” something they undoubtedly couldn’t even properly define is really close to worthless.
“57 – 59 % opposed” is what I’ve been hearing all month! Of course there’s no mention that the public option (and before that, single payer) was supported by approximately the same percentage (depending on the poll). Commentators seem endlessly fascinated by the concept that the Democrats are failing our democracy, but somehow never even saw fit to publish this other poll data. What a study in selective focus of the Corporate Press!
I’m one of the liberal lefties who doesn’t like this plan because it forces everyone to purchase health insurance without any real means to make it affordable, which has been while the same law in Mass. is so despised. Because it’s a government plan the cutoff on whether or not you can receive a “discount” of any kind is if you’re so poor you’re living in an inner-city slum or backwoods shack with no electricity or running water and make less than $5,000 a year.
And for all the “debate” it’s only now that the health care bill has been passed am I seeing stories about people who really need this, the uninsured, those with pre-existing conditions, those losing coverage because they had the audacity to get sick, etc. Why haven’t the Democrats been trucking these poor souls in front of the TV camera for the last year? And why weren’t the media doing stories on them? THEY are what the debates been all about!
The forced purchase of health insurance is now labeled as a Left wing item even though it was first proposed by Newt Gingrich then picked up by Romney for Massachusetts. Why? Because people are so against it from all political points of view so they are using now. They were for it till they are against it! Whatever suites their purpose.
The miserepubilkans are Right ARM! They kept their base, while avoiding an Obummer blame game upon them for any “bipartisan ‘support'”, putatively causing a GOP-“watered down” bill. This stinking, steaming pile of Democrap is solely theirs! Meanwhile, the DEM jackass souls have lost their ENTIRE progressive base for lack of Honoring the SINGLE-PAYER PROMISE in exchange for our assistance allowing DEM “to take back the White House, to take back the Senate, to take back the House”! – B.O.
I really dont understand why this story was written. I am one who opposed the white house plan. I am not a republican nor a democrat. I am for a single payer system so ofcourse I oppose this insurance company, big pharma bailout. This weak healthcare plan could have been passed last year but i believe the idea was to make it appear like the democrats wanted more. Lets be clear this bill was not held up and drawn out because of the republicans. The democrats have the majority. They did nothing this month that they could not have done last year. Democrats, Republicans……………they all suck!
The Money Party has once again defeated the People Party.
May I add this. We had a year of media coverage of the health care debate. And the universal media consensus was that this bill could not pass with 59 democratic senator’s votes. How could all the media get it so wrong. Was it because they were pro insurance companies, or were they just that ignorant on how bills pass in the congress? Where is even one media source apologizing for that year of bad coverage?
It always aggravates me when the corpress is said to “not understand” something, or “make mistakes”.
If I can understand this, then certainly Wolf et al can, can’t they?
So, if they do, what logical conclusion must we come to?
Am I being too Vulcan?
Doug: Everybody “makes mistakes”, but to suggest that the ‘corpress’ does “not understand” is naive at best. Obviously you are not naive & so understand that the muddiness is planned & determined.
When are people going to understand that what passes for journalism and reporting in america is just the opinions of millionairs dressed up as popular opinion? With the exception of a very very few reporters what passes for journalism here is a sick joke. I for one read NO newspapers and watch NO television except the Rachel Maddow show which is the closest thing we have to real journalism in America. Shame on us.
I’m one for whom the bill didn’t go far enough, not even close. All it really had to do for me is provide stiff competition to the corporate insurance industry, and it certainly doesn’t do that. Costs are the biggest problem, followed closely by denial of coverage for serious illness, and denial of coverage for pre-existing conditions. The law merely trades mandatory insurance for no “pre-existing conditions”. Some deal.
But my question is: what percentage of the people polled were deceived by the media? People who, if they had received fair and balanced press coverage of the proposed legislation, would have either supported it or not, but instead were forming their opinions based on right-wing propaganda disseminated far and wide by the corporate bullhorn we call media. Many places have few choices, maybe one, when it comes to news programming. CNN can pound sand about Blitzer’s thin detail treatment over their polls, which amount to more of the same deception. Thank you FAIR for being, fair.
Dennis, I think which words you choose are important, and so when corpress critics speak in terms of “mistakes” and “errors”, rather than intentional acts of deception and censorship, even if they mean that, they lose clarity in their criticism.
Yes, the reasons for the sorry state of journalism are more complex than that, but that’s got to be your starting point, doesn’t it?
I used to think that the “American people” were like myself: air breathing, water drinking, food eating humans. The recent supreme court decision allowing corporate interests (both domestic and foreign) to spend money to influence the outcome elections of public officials made me take another look at what is happening. I think that humans are going to be displaced by a new “American People,” a corporate person that doesn’t need to drink or breathe but has a voracious appetite for wealth. This corporate person won’t care about the cleanliness of air, water, or the quality of human life.