According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, healthcare reform is getting steadily more popular among Republicans and steadily less popular among Democrats. Weird, huh? But as the chart below shows, the popularity of ACA peaked among Dems in January and then started declining, while it bottomed out among Republicans in March and then started rising. Using advanced mathematical techniques, I can forecast that ACA will be equally popular among both Democrats and Republicans in March 2012:
Just kidding, of course. But I think this goes to show what happens when something falls out of public view. Roughly speaking, I think that ACA has been replaced on the cable shoutfest circuit with other topics, which means it’s becoming less of a tribal totem. So you no longer say you hate it just because you’re a Republican and Fox News says you’re supposed to hate it. You only say you hate it if you really do. Ditto in reverse for Democrats. It’s becoming less of a culture war issue and more a simple question of whether it provides you any benefits that you care about. And on that score, it’s always been better for conservatives than they think (they get their doughnut hole removed just like everyone else) and worse for liberals than they think (most of them won’t really see much difference in their healthcare).
This immediate trend won’t keep up (the 2012 campaign is likely to put ACA back on the partisan front burner), but this kind of convergence is still pretty likely over the long term. After all, is there much of a partisan split these days about whether you like Medicare or not?
