Bending Toward Universal Health Care

… For as long as political scientists have measured public opinion, we have known that Americans respond to abstract questions by opposing “big government” but evaluate particular government benefits and actions very differently. As long as opponents of health reform could ask “Is it constitutional?” the argument was on their terrain. Now the debate will swerve back toward the popular core of the act, if the White House and Congressional Democrats are savvy in how they talk about existing and future benefits. [cont.]

Theda Skocpol, Harvard, and Lawrence R. Jacobs, U. of Minnesota