November 4, 2010
Health Care Vote Only a Part of Democrats’ Vulnerability
By KEVIN SACK

ATLANTA — In the end, it may have mattered less whether vulnerable Democratic incumbents voted for or against the health care law than that they simply had a D by their names.

Virtually every House Democrat from a swing district who took a gamble by voting for the health law made a bad political bet. Among 22 who provided crucial yes votes from particularly risky districts, 19 ended up losing on Tuesday. That included all five members who voted against a more expensive House version last November and then changed their votes to support the final legislation in March.

But even the Democrats who bucked the White House and their party’s leadership by voting against the measure gained little protection. Of the 30 Democrats who opposed the final bill and then stood for re-election, 17 lost anyway.

Indeed, among 49 Democratic incumbents who lost on Tuesday, 32 had voted for the health care law and 17 against it.

Douglas J. Holtz-Eakin, who advised Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign on health care and economic issues, said voters had rebuked the Democrats in part because they had devoted more than a year to health care rather than jobs, and because the bill had become emblematic of overreaching.

“So it didn’t matter which way you voted,” he said. “If you’re a Democrat, you got punished.”

Surveys of voters leaving the polls found deep division over the health law. Nearly half of voters — 48 percent — said they thought it should be repealed, while 31 percent said Congress should expand it and 16 percent said it should be left as is.

“When pollsters asked, voters listed health reform among the top issues on their mind, which is no surprise after a long, heated debate,” said Drew E. Altman, president of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, which conducts health policy research. “But there is little evidence that it was decisive in the vote.”

At his news conference on Wednesday, President Obama tried to put the best light on the polling results.

“It also means one out of two voters think it was the right thing to do,” Mr. Obama said.

Mr. Obama said the most difficult aspect of Tuesday’s outcome would be the departure of “some terrific members of Congress who took really tough votes because they thought it was the right thing, even though they knew this could cause them political problems.” He said the losses had made him question whether he could “have done something differently or done something more, so that those folks would still be here.”

Mr. Obama on several occasions in the campaign praised House Democrats like Representatives John Boccieri of Ohio and Tom Perriello of Virginia as casting courageous votes for the health care law. Mr. Perriello lost narrowly, while Mr. Boccieri lost by 11 percentage points.

The Republican tide was strong enough that it also swept away Democrats like Representative Jim Marshall, who trumpeted his vote against the law in advertisements in his middle Georgia district.

“How do you measure the difference in a setting like this?” Mr. Marshall asked Wednesday in an interview. “You could easily argue that my results would have been worse, not as close, had I voted in favor of the health care bill or voted in favor of cap and trade.”

Mr. Boccieri said Tuesday night that he had no regrets about his vote. “I went to Washington not to do what was easy,” he said, “but to do what was right.”

Mr. Obama wondered aloud at his news conference whether Tuesday’s losers really had no regrets. “They may be just saying that,” he said, “to make me feel better.”