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John Edwards has a new TV ad (which I just saw on TV as I was writing this post) about his plan to take away members of Congress health care away if they fail to pass universal health care.
Edwards says...
But if you don’t pass universal health care by July of 2009, in six months, I’m going to use my power as president to take your health care away from you.
Matt Stoller at Open Left wonders if this message will resonate with voters.
Out of all the candidate's speeches, this line from Edwards drew the most applause at Saturday's Jefferson Jackson dinner in Des Moines. The audience at the Jefferson Jackson dinner was a white, older, married population of caucus goers and they loved the message.96 percent of voters in 2006 had insurance. It is one of strongest predictors of turnout.In other words, it doesn't matter if this ad resonates among the uninsured, because the uninsured tend not to vote. That may change with the increase in youth voter and single women voting registration efforts, but these efforts are unlikely to impact the Iowa caucuses.
Will this ad resonate among Iowa caucus-goers themselves? It's hard to say. Universal health care is something Democrats believe in as a matter of principle, but a whiter, older, married population of caucus goers is unlikely to take the issue itself into account when choosing their candidate. The goal, of course, is to tell a story about what kind of President Edwards will be, to draw out a character issue and say that Edwards is with the dispossessed rather than the elite.
3 comments:
I don't know your age but when I was in my 20s I had a lot of friends who spent far more on party time, cigs, vacations (large and small) than insurance would have cost them, yet chose not to purchase insurance..
I don't think kids have changed that much in the last twenty years. There's a very large part of your "uninsured" in most statistical analysis.
One reason I support universal health care is because I don't think a business should be required to provide insurance for their employers. All you have to do is look at the auto industry.
"The cost of providing health care adds from $1,100 to $1,500 to the cost of each of the 4.65 million vehicles GM sold last year, according to various calculations. GM expects to spend at least $5.6 billion on health care this year, more than it spent on advertising last year."
Auto manufacturers in other countries don't have to take into account these costs because their health insurance is not employer based. In a globalized world, our businesses are at a disadvantage because we do not have universal health care.
Many people with insurance support universal health care because they know that a job change (layoff, their company goes out of business, or just a desire to change careers) could immediately leave them uninsured--and, if they've got a "pre-existing condition," potentially uninsurable for their biggest health problem.
Also, I would think that liberals and other Democrats focused on social justice issues (which includes many Catholics, for instance) would find this idea appealing.
That line has been getting a lot of applause for months, on par with the part of his speech where he says it's time for the president to ask Americans to be patriotic about something other than war.
desmoinesdem
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