Compare Harry Reid’s prediction from the Senate floor before the final health care vote —
We’re going to hear an earful, but it’s going to be an earful of wonderment and happiness that people waited for for a long time
— with the greeting of Sen. Christopher Dodd at a news conference shortly after he returned to Connecticut:
As Dodd spoke Thursday, a man walking by called out: “Talk while you can; you’re not going to get re-elected.”
Dodd at least was not alone.
About 100 people showed up Tuesday at the federal courthouse in Baton Rouge to protest U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu’s support of the Democratic health-care bill being debated in the U.S. Senate
When Harry Reid himself got home, was he greeted with “wonderment and happiness”? Hardly. In fact, he was greeted with this editorial from Sherman Frederick, the publisher of the Las Vegas Review Journal:
I’m very disappointed.
It’s Christmas morning and I can’t find one single gift to Nevada from Sen. Harry Reid under the health-care “reform” tree.
Louisiana got a nice package. Florida and Connecticut, too. And Nebraska scored a really big present.
Just three days ago Uncle Harry said that if a senator didn’t get his state “something” in the health-care “reform” package, then that senator wasn’t doing his or her job.
And yesterday Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., upped the ante. He said that every state did “get something” in the measure.
OK. I’m excited. What’s Nevada’s gift? Uncle Harry, as everyone knows, is the Big Kahuna of the Senate. He “brings home the bacon,” his TV commercials claim. So if Nebraska got dispensation from Medicaid increases forever, one can only imagine the magnitude of Nevada’s present….
Reid threw the dice (and everything else) gambling on “wonderment and happiness,” but he seems to have come up with snake eyes.
I’m sure many others across the country are also wondering what bribes “bacon” their senators brought home. Here’s one such question, whose author I can reliably report has received no reply:
As a Virginian, I wonder what my Senators, Jim Webb and Mark Warner, got. Does their silence about the bribes goodies for Virginia they secured mean they are embarrassed because they gave their votes away for free, meaning they liked the Reid bill so much they didn’t have to be bribed induced to vote for it? Or are they embarrassed to admit their votes were for sale? Or perhaps they are embarrassed for having sold too cheaply? I assume we’ll find out.
UPDATE: More “Wonderment and Happiness” [31 December]
Well, at least wonderment. The voters of Nebraska wonder so much about the sale of Sen. Ben Nelson’s vote that Rasmussen finds him 30 points behind his potential 2012 challenger, Governor Dave Heineman. Nelson won his second term in 2006 with 64% of the vote.
Meanwhile, now that presumably they’ve made an effort to look at what’s in the health care bill, according to Politico
[t]he governors of the nation’s two largest Democratic states are leveling sharp criticism at the Senate health care bill, claiming that it would leave their already financially strapped states even deeper in the hole.
New York Democratic Gov. David Paterson and California GOP Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger are urging congressional leaders to rework the Medicaid financing in the Senate-passed bill, warning that under that version their states will be crushed by billions in new costs.
Among the many delusions under which Sen. Harry Reid suffers, one of them is that once the people know what’s actually in the health care bill they will support it (“wonderment and happiness,” etc.). Rasmussen also throws a poll of cold water on that deluded wishful thinking.
Many have questioned whether those who favor or oppose the health care plan in Congress really know what’s in it. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey suggests that they have a decent understanding of the bill and that voter attitudes towards the legislation have hardened.
While several individual components of the plan are popular, reminding voters of what’s included in the plan has virtually no impact on support for the overall legislation. This suggests that there are not major surprises in the legislation that will cause people to change their opinion of it.
Thirty-nine percent (39%) of voters nationwide support the plan, and 58% are opposed. That’s consistent with our weekly tracking of the issue which has found support between 38% and 41% every week from just before Thanksgiving to the end of 2009.
It will be interesting to see how many Democrats representing less than solid blue constituencies will remain willing to risk their careers for such an expensive, flawed, and unpopular bill.
