Those Socialist Americans

A quarter of the American people (26 percent, to be exact), according to Friday morning’s New York Times/CBS News poll, believe that the health-care reform bills floating around Congress will create governmental death panels, while just 23 percent say they won’t. Another 30 percent believe that the bills will allow federal tax dollars to go towards the purchase of insurance by illegal immigrants, while just 22 percent say they won’t. The right-wing noise machine has evidently reached many right-wing ears.



But here’s the stunner: In the very same poll, respondents were asked whether they favored a Medicare-like public option for everyone. The right-wingers were out there in roughly the same numbers that they registered in answering the other questions: 26 percent of respondents said they opposed the public option. But a whopping 65 supported it.



Think about that. The public option has been demonized non-stop for the past half-year; it’s the key to the Republican charge that instituting such a program is tantamount to bringing socialism to America. They have clearly rallied the Republican base to this position, just as they rallied the base to fear the coming of death panels and publicly-subsidized immigrant care. But whereas pluralities of Americans simply said they didn’t know enough to believe one thing or the other about death panels and immigrant care, virtually all Americans not in the Republican base support the public option.



Here, the question isn’t whether the bills working their way through Congress say X or Y. The question is whether a public option would be a good deal for the American people, and the American people have answered that it would. They have surely heard the claims that it would be the socialist nose in the capitalist tent, and the only logical inference is that they actually support socialism (not too likely) or that they don’t think it would constitute an embrace of socialism -- at least, no more than such other government programs as Medicare or public utilities have constituted that.



Since Republican legislators represent the 26 percent of Americans opposed to the public option, their opposition to same poses no mystery. The conundrum is why some Democrats -- all save those from the most right-wing districts -- oppose it. When The Post’s uber-policy blogger Ezra Klein asked North Dakota Democratic Senator Kent Conrad yesterday why he didn’t support the public option, Conrad replied, “I don't think a government-run plan best fits this culture.” In Conrad’s mind, such as it is, American culture doesn’t seem to be shaped by the American people.



Is the intensity of the support for the public option as great as that of the opposition? Apparently not, at least, not yet. Does a 65-percent-to-26-percent margin nonetheless give the Democrats the ability to defend the public option and actually win support for doing so? It does if they’re any good at their chosen trade.



The American people have just told the Democrats, If you vote for the public option, we’ve got your back. Of course, if Democrats are utterly spineless, having their back yields nothing.