Is this a sign of what will happen to Democrats who voted “no” on health care reform? If so, incumbents like Rick Boucher could be in big trouble.
What happened is that Creigh Deeds asked his “Facebook Friends” to support Rep. Rick Boucher, who Creigh argues “has been working hard to bring jobs to Southwest Virginia for almost 30 years.” I figured the responses would be variants on “definitely, will do!” Instead, out of 22 responses, so far I count 21 that are unhappy (or angry) at Boucher to varying degrees for voting “no” on health care reform last night. The responses range from “There’s no way I’d support him….he didn’t vote for health care” to “Time for a primary challenge” to “If he’s going to think like a Republican, let him be replaced by one” to “Creigh you’re still not getting it…”
Is this apparent anger at Rick Boucher (and also at Glenn Nye) an isolated or widespread phenomenon? According to Public Policy Polling, it might be the latter:
If voters are mad about Democrats passing the health care bill, they’re likely to take it out on Democratic members of Congress regardless of how they actually voted. The conventional wisdom may be that it was good politics for Democrats to vote no, but they may find an unenthusiastic base and little gratefulness from Republicans and conservative leaning independents since their no votes didn’t end up making a difference. I have no doubt the health care bill is unpopular, but I think its political fallout for Democrats is more complicated than saying the ones who voted for it are in big trouble and the ones who voted no are less so.
Of course, November is still a long time away (in politics, a few months is an eternity), so we’ll see what happens. Still, things aren’t looking good right now for Democrats who voted “no” on health care reform, at least not with the “base” of the party.
P.S. For the record, I’m not at all thrilled with Boucher or Nye for voting no on health care reform, but I don’t want their seats taken by Republicans either. In the end, I’ll most likely be focusing my energies elsewhere this summer and fall…
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