Nancy Pelosi Still Thinks Obamacare is a Winner for Democrats

Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi
says she believes Obamacare is a winner for her party. Asked about
how the law’s ongoing low approval numbers would affect Democrats’
chances in tight races this November, she said, “You’ll have to ask
to ask the member, but I believe it’s a winner.”

The polls say otherwise. Indeed, they’ve said otherwise since
before the law was passed. On average, polls currently show that
about 53.7 percent of the public disapproves of the law, while just
38.5 percent approves,
according to RealClearPolitics (RCP).

There have been minor shifts in approval and disapproval since
the law passed, but overall those numbers have consistently shown
disapproval since the law passed. The law passed in March 2010, but
according to the RCP poll average, at no point since that year has
public approval ever topped disapproval.

But Pelosi still claims to think it’s a winner. If that sounds
familiar, it’s probably because that’s the same argument the
Democratic establishment pushed back in 2010 to help nudge anxious
Democrats to vote for the law. As Politico
noted at the time, numerous top Democrats and party
strategists, including Bill Clinton and Obama administration
pollsters, publicly predicted that the law would become popular
after passage, and that party legislators would be able to run on
its successes.

Indeed, even months after the law passed, that was the line that
Pelosi and her staff were feeding reporters. She and her leadership
team were “doubling down on healthcare reform,” the Hill reported
in July 2010, “betting that it will do Democrats more good than
harm in November’s elections.” Once the public were more exposed to
the law and its benefits, the argument went, they would warm up to
it. 

Obviously, they didn’t. In fact, there’s some pretty solid
political science research suggesting that
Democrats lost the House in 2010 because of
Obamacare. 

Four years later, the public has had plenty of exposure to the
law and its effects—and if anything, it’s less popular now than it
was when it passed. That doesn’t sound much like a winner to
me.