Health-care repeal not popular among House Democrats
Over the weekend, Rep. Fred Upton, the chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, predicted that so many Democrats would join in the effort to repeal the health-care reform bill that the House might get near the two-thirds that could overturn a veto (this is presumably after Republicans take the Senate in 2012). That'd mean about 50 Democratic defections.
Today, the House voted on the rule governing health-care repeal, and rule votes tend to be pretty good predictors of real votes. So how many Democrats crossed the aisle? Four. That's substantially fewer than the 13 who voted against the legislation in the first place, and it suggests that the Democratic Party might be coalescing around the fight against repealing health-care reform in a way that eluded it during the fight to pass health-care reform. Jon Cohn has more thoughts on that possibility here.
By
Ezra Klein
| January 7, 2011; 3:54 PM ET
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Health Reform
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"Today, the House voted on the rule governing health-care repeal, and rule votes tend to be pretty good predictors of real votes. So how many Democrats crossed the aisle? Four. That's substantially fewer than the 13 who voted against the legislation in the first place, and it suggests that the Democratic Party might be coalescing around the fight against repealing health-care reform in a way that eluded it during the fight to pass health-care reform. Jon Cohn has more thoughts on that possibility here."
What's the overlap between the four and the thirteen who originally voted against it? I would suspect that a lot of the Democrats who originally voted against it lost their seats to Republicans in the mid-term elections.
Posted by: jnc4p | January 7, 2011 4:53 PM | Report abuse
The thirteen refers to Dems who voted against the bill and are still in Congress today.
Posted by: DDAWD | January 7, 2011 5:14 PM | Report abuse
Every single Republican and Democratic Senator and Congressman have same "Obama Care" including our every single armed forces member, our soldiers. Nobody of them complains about it, so why can't we all have same health care? If its so bad, oh well we need to give better health care to our soldiers at least, but those crooks in government, I could care less for them, heck take it away from them and see how they complain about that.
Posted by: BOBSTERII | January 7, 2011 5:57 PM | Report abuse
While I don't doubt there will only be a few Democratic defections on the final vote too, I dispute the idea that rules votes are good predictors of final votes. That hasn't been what I've observed over the years. Rules votes are much more party-line votes.
Posted by: jfung79 | January 7, 2011 10:05 PM | Report abuse
LOL, it is easy to "coalesce" around a position when everyone who held a contrary position was just wiped out in the last election.
Posted by: JackIL08 | January 8, 2011 10:29 AM | Report abuse
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