Healthcare and Self Preservation

By Fester:

I am a firm believer that most politicians like their jobs and will do what they can to keep their jobs or get promoted.  That often produces shameless self-promotion and idiotic policy decisions that look good on television for thirty eight seconds but cause long term harm or at least sub-optimal outcomes.  This belief is getting stretched with the conservative Democrats opposition to healthcare reform as their fate is tied to Obama's fate now that the Democrats control the trifecta of government.

Brad Delong has argued that it is in the best interest of all Democrats for Obama's signature items to be both seen as successful and actually be successful:

Back in both 1977 and 1993 the Democratic congressional barons treated
Carter and Clinton with utter contempt--as if they had no skin in the
game, and were unaffected by either president's success or failures....1994 was definitely a wake-up call: President Clinton's first two years
were perceived as years of failure, and so the Democrats lost their
seats and their majorities...

The Republicans learned half the lesson from 1994: in 2001 they believed that George W. Bush had to be perceived as a success...

Let's hope the Democrats learn the full lesson: Barack Obama needs to be perceived as a success and needs to be a success.

If the first two years of Obama's term are perceived to have been a failure economically as unemployment may be going down next summer from a peak of 10% or 11%,  and there is no countervailing positive accomplishment such as an effective health-care reform package, Democrats will lost a significant number of net seats unless the public disgust with Republicans remains unfulfilled. 

It is likely that more Blue Dogs, proportionally and absolutely, will
lose their seats than any other Democratic House caucus if there are no
counter-weighing accomplishments and signs of progress. The Democrats who are more likely to lose their seats are from marginal seats.  Liberal Democrats from D+15 seats may see their winning margins shrink but hold on by double digit margins anyways.  Democrats in Republican leaning seats will be fighting both the natural tilt of their district and a political tide that is running against them for the first time in three cycles. 

Using this framework, I do not get either the policy logic or the political survival logic of the current Blue Dog bitching and moaning about health-care reform being too expensive and they only acceptable fixes they want to see will decrease its effectiveness and increase its expenses.