Yesterday J.P. Green did a post on the Missouri “ObamaCare referendum,” noting its rather tilted character and echoing Jon Chait’s endorsement of a progressive way around the unpopularity of an individual mandate for the purchase of health insurance, as designed by Paul Starr.

But there’s another aspect of the Missouri vote that ought to be mentioned: the individual mandate that was the target of the the state law ratified by Proposition C wasn’t just a feature of “ObamaCare.” It was also a central element in RomneyCare, Massachusetts’ pioneer health reform effort. And amidst all the rationalizations that Romney has offered in an effort to distinguish RomneyCare from ObamaCare, he hasn’t repudiated his support for an individual mandate.

Even if you don’t think the Missouri vote was a fair representation of overall public opinion in the Show-Me State (and it’s dubious on that front, given the low turnout and the 2-1 Republican tilt among priimary voters), it was sure a good measure of how politically active Republicans feel. And a shudder had to shake Romney when he heard about it, since it’s very unlikely the 2012 Caucus-goers in next-door Iowa are going to feel any warmer towards the individual mandate seventeen months from now, when they once again pass judgment on Mitt’s presidential ambitions.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist

Photo Credit: nmfbihop’s Photostream

One of the most unnerving aspects of the recent health reform debate was the extent to which opponents of various Democratic plans (usually lumped together as “ObamaCare”) embraced and promoted outright falsehoods, most famously the idea that the legislation would encourage euthanasia-by-rationing.

Brendan Nyhan now has an important article at The Forum that not only looks at the role of deliberate misinformation in the “ObamaCare” debate, but compares it to a similar Big Lie that “stuck” during the earlier debate over the Clinton administration’s health reform proposal (i.e., the claim that the proposal would eliminate the ability of Americans to choose doctors). He notes the seminal role of pseudo-wonk Betsy McCaughey in both episodes of disinformation, and the importance of partisan conservative media in reinforcing fabricated claims.

Nyhan’s conclusion is sobering:

The evidence presented in this article suggests that misinformation played an important role in the two most recent debates over health care reform. While some critics have faulted the response of the Clinton and Obama administrations to these charges… the argument presented in this article suggests that political myths are extremely difficult to counter. For instance, proponents of reform might attempt to address concerns in the bill-writing process, but Betsy McCaughey’s 1994 article suggests that such disclaimers can be distorted or ignored. And false claims with no actual basis in legislation such as the “death panel” myth are especially insidious precisely because they cannot be addressed in the bill itself. As a result, until the media stops giving so much attention to misinformers, elites on both sides will often succeed in creating misperceptions, especially among sympathetic partisans. And once such beliefs take hold, few good options exist to counter them—correcting misperceptions is simply too difficult.

A particularly depressing finding of Nyhan’s is that belief in Big Lies about health reform actually increased among those Republicans who thought of themselves as well-informed on the subject. This reflects the experience many have had with conservative talk radio or Fox News fans who feel “empowered” by the “truth” about liberal policy ideas or politicians, and are exceptionally resistant to contrary facts or “objective” referees of the facts. Any progressive who’s done conservative call-in shows (or had extended discussions with conservative-activists friends or family) and dealt with inquisitors who perpetually suggest they are “on to you” and have divined your secret plans and motives knows exactly what I am talking about.

It’s almost certainly unfair and counterproductive, and in any event a waste of time, to criticize consumers of deliberate misinformation as ignorant. When it comes to complex topics like health care, even extremely well-informed people filter information — or misinformation — via ideological presumptions, partisanship, and the “trust factor” of where they turn to become informed.

The better course, as Nyhan argues, is to focus on the elites who invent and disseminate misinformation, and relentlessly undermine their bogus credibility. Serial offenders like McCaughey should be hooted off the public stage when they pop up again (as did, to some extent, happen during the ObamaCare debate). And politicians who retail misinformation should be held accountable just as much. Personally, I wish that much of the vast progressive sea of contempt for Sarah Palin’s rhetoric and mannerisms would instead be channeled into a relentless focus on her huge and unrepentent role — via a Facebook post, no less — in turning the lie about government-encouraged euthanasia into the Big Lie of “Obama death panels.” This despicable act, aimed at terrifying seniors and the families of those with disabilities, not her general lack of intellectual curiosity or her inexperience in governing, is what should disqualify her from any elected office at least until she confesses and seeks absolution.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

Photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/andrewaliferis/ / CC BY-ND 2.0

In the run-up to health care reform’s passage, many people (including yours truly) predicted that the president’s approval ratings would see a bump once the bill passed. Bill Clinton went out on a limb and forecast a 10-point bounce. And in the days immediately following passage, Obama’s approval ratings did seem to nudge up a little.

More than a week later, however, Obama’s approval ratings seem to have been little changed:

Democrats who held out hopes that President Barack Obama’s health reform win would mean a quick boost to the party’s political fortunes are getting a reality check — a reminder that it takes more than one good week to shake up a year of sliding polls.

Obama and his health reform plan did get a bump in several surveys immediately after the House vote eight days ago — but the numbers in some of those polls flattened out, showing how difficult it will be for Obama to capitalize on reform, even after his top legislative goal cleared Congress.

Even the bounce for the plan itself has proven evanescent. A USA Today/Gallup poll immediately after passage found 49 percent favoring it versus 40 percent against, an improvement from earlier polls. But the newest USA Today/Gallup poll now finds a 47-50 favor/oppose split. An aggregate of polls on health care finds little movement from the pre-passage days.

How to read the numbers? For one thing, it reveals just how divisive the health reform debate has been. After months of Republicans demonizing the plan as the next stage in Obama’s grand totalitarian scheme, it’s no surprise that a week-plus of good news cycles has done little to change public opinion.

But perhaps the more important lesson here is just how much the economy overrides everything right now. With the employment situation still dismal and the recovery yet to manifest itself on Main Street, the public mood is still understandably sour.

In a blog post yesterday, Charles Franklin repeated an observation he made earlier — that Obama’s public approval ratings, and the forces influencing it, track very closely with what we saw with Ronald Reagan:

The short version is both come in with inherited economic troubles that don’t turn around miraculously in the first 24 months. Both replace deeply unpopular predecessors, and suffer from high expectations in comparison. And both set out to dramatically change the direction of national policy. Reagan suffered substantial losses in the House in his first midterm (26 seats lost), and Obama looks headed to similar if not larger losses in 2010.

So how is the analogy holding up? In approval terms, still quite well. The two continue to track rather well. Obama has occasionally been slightly below and recently slightly above Reagan’s trend, but the parallel movement remains striking. Likewise, their relative location compared to other first term post-war presidents continues to drive home the point that these have been (so far) among the lowest approval ratings in the first 24 months.

One bright spot for Democrats is that the economy seems to be turning earlier for Obama than it did for Reagan. Even though unemployment has not yet begun its descent, the upward trend in GDP is a hopeful sign. (According to Franklin, GDP is “consistently a better predictor of midterm outcomes than is unemployment,” counterintuitive though that may seem.)

The other bright spot for Dems comes from a closer look at the polling numbers. Though the overall numbers have seen little improvement, Democratic enthusiasm seems to have been buoyed by health reform’s passage. In a midterm election, when traditionally low turnout puts even greater pressure on a party to bring its faithful to the polls, a depressed base would have been disastrous for Democrats. Obviously, the Republican rank-and-file will be fired up for November. But now, at least, the Democrats can make a fight of it with its own energized base.

Back at the beginning of the year, I wrote a piece suggesting that putative 2012 Republican presidential front-runner Mitt Romney might have a hard time overcoming his sponsorship of a form of health care reform in Massachusetts that was impressively similar to that great socialist abomination, ObamaCare. This has now become a pretty common refrain in the early 2012 handicapping (viz. this Jonathan Martin-Ben Smith item in Politico yesterday), to the point where the estimable Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic posted a rebuttal to the Mitt-as-toast hypothesis yesterday.

Ambinder made four reasonable points about Romney’s potential viability regardless of RomneyCare. Let’s consider them in order:

(1) RomneyCare may look more successful by 2012. I don’t think the problem with RomneyCare is that it’s unpopular on unsuccessful in MA; it’s that it bears a lot of resemblence to ObamaCare, which is by definition, regardless of public opinion or objective reality, a horror to the kind of people who participate in Republican presidential primaries.

(2) Health care may not be a transcendent Republican issue by 2012 (just as the Iraq War began to recede once the 2008 Democratic contest reached its climax). Sure, other major issues of importance to Republican primary-goers may emerge, but until such time, if ever, health reform is repealed, there is virtually no chance that it will be forgotten by 2012 (and it can’t be repealed before then unless Republicans win every single Senate race this year and also win two-thirds of the House). If the Iraq War is a suitable analogy, as Ambinder suggests, I think it’s indisputable that Barack Obama would have never emerged as a viable presidential candidate in 2008 if Hillary Clinton hadn’t voted for the war resolution and then refused to say she made a mistake by doing so. Other issues mattered, but that was the big threshold issue. (One of my fellow Mitt-o-skeptics, Jonathan Chait, did a response to Ambinder today that mainly focuses on his own belief that RomneyCare will actually be a bigger issue for Republicans in the future than it is today.)

(3) The Republican nominating process is “hierarchical,” and especially favorable to establishment favorites like Romney. This is something you hear all the time, and it’s valid in the very limited sense that the rules for awarding delegates in Republican contests don’t demand strict proportionality, and thus help front-runners consolidate early victories. But in 2012, as in 2008, Mitt’s problem could be getting out of the gate, not finishing off the field. Recall that in Iowa in 2008, he couldn’t survive what was basically a one-on-one contest with Mike Huckabee, despite a vast financial advantage and endorsements from most of the local GOP establishment, and even though he was running as the “true conservative” in the race. None of Romney’s problems from 2008 (a wooden speaking style, a history of flip-flops on cultural issues, his religion, his history as a corporate downsizer) have gone away, and it’s very likely the Iowa Caucuses will be even more dominated by cultural conservatives than ever, given the huge importance of the gay marriage issue to conservatives in that state. Add in RomneyCare, and the odds look pretty bad; skipping Iowa like McCain did is a possibility, but would also give another candidate a good chance to become the early front-runner, going into two states (Michigan and New Hampshire) that Romney can’t lose and still have a prayer for the nomination.

(4) Romney is just too reasonable and accomplished a candidate to get knocked out by one issue. Maybe so, but as noted above, he has more than one problem, and as it happens, “one issue” — in fact, one utterance — knocked Mitt’s father, George, out of the 1968 presidential contest, and his resume was if anything stronger than his son’s. If I were a Republican, I’d actually be worried that Mitt’s sitting there soaking up attention endorsements, and poll numbers that could go to some attractive darkhorse candidate, leaving the GOP with a very weak field if he does go belly-up. And you don’t have to be a total Democratic partisan to observe that Republicans aren’t disposed at the moment to be completely rational about their choice of candidates: a recent PPP survey suggested that nearly as many rank-and-file Republicans think it’s more important to nominate a candidate who is “conservative on every issue” as those who think it’s more important to nominate someone “who can beat Barack Obama.”

In any event, will all due respect to Marc Ambinder (who may simply be playing devil’s advocate), I’d say the burden of persuasion should be on those who think Mitt Romney’s stronger than he was in 2008 than on those who think he’s in very deep trouble thanks to RomneyCare.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

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Over the weekend Ron Brownstein wrote up the nightmare scenario for Democrats in terms of their appeal to white working class voters:

[P]olling just before the [health reform] bill’s approval showed that most white Americans believed that the legislation would primarily benefit the uninsured and the poor, not people like them. In a mid-March Gallup survey, 57 percent of white respondents said that the bill would make things better for the uninsured, and 52 percent said that it would improve conditions for low-income families. But only one-third of whites said that it would benefit the country overall — and just one-fifth said that it would help their own family….Obama has already been hurt by the perception, fanned by Republicans, that the principal beneficiaries of his efforts to repair the economy are the same interests that broke it: Wall Street, big banks, and the wealthy. The belief that Washington has transferred benefits up the income ladder is pervasive across society but especially pronounced among white voters with less than a college education, the group that most resisted Obama in 2008. Now health care could threaten Democrats from the opposite direction by stoking old fears, particularly among the white working class, that liberals are transferring income down the income ladder to the “less deserving.”

Brownstein calls this dynamic “an unusual populist crossfire.” The antidote, he suggests, might be two-fold: continuing to stress the benefits for the middle class, and to the country, of health reform, while spending more time reinforcing a Democratic message on the economy and the financial system that makes Republicans, not Democrats, defenders of Wall Street and the wealthy. The White House and congressional Democrats seem to be moving briskly on both those fronts, and how well they succeed could be fateful in November. At the same time, it wouldn’t hurt to make sure that perceptions (which Brownstein also documents) by poor and minority voters that health reform does in fact help them and help the country produce a greater willingness to vote this year than would normally be the case in a midterm election.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

Amazing what a little history-making legislation can do for your image. As others have already pointed out, the media narrative of the Obama presidency has undergone a wholesale revision in the wake of the House’s passage of health care reform legislation. Gone are the accounts of a flailing presidency and a Democratic Party headed for doom in November. In their place are breathless stories about an administration pulled back from the brink, and a presidency on its way to becoming one of the most consequential in the nation’s history.

It’s far too early to make a judgment of Obama’s legacy, of course. But the stories of triumphant Democrats are all too real and affirm what those who’ve been advocating for reform have been saying: winning does a party good. November may still look ugly for Democrats – historically, the out party has gained seats in a new president’s first midterm election – but passing their top domestic priority will rally the base and give them a fighting chance to keep losses to a minimum.

More than firing up a disillusioned base for the election, the passage of health reform also gives the American public an image of a triumphant Democratic Party. And if there’s one thing Americans like, it’s winners. Before the passage of health care reform, polls showed a majority viewing it unfavorably. In the wake of Sunday’s historic win – and, no less important, headline after headline about that historic win – the first Gallup poll to come out on health care now has the numbers flipped: 49 percent now call reform a “good thing,” versus 40 percent saying it was a “bad thing.” As the president is poised to go on the road to do some more barnstorming for the plan, expect those numbers to inch up some more.

One of the healthiest effects health care’s passage will have on Democrats politically is that it will likely give President Obama’s approval rating a boost. According to Nate Silver’s analysis, the correlation between a president’s approval rating prior to the midterms and his party’s performance at the polls is actually very strong. Today, President Obama’s approval-disapproval rating on Gallup’s daily tracking poll sits at 51 percent-43 percent; just a few days ago, it was at 46 percent-47 percent.

It’s early yet, of course, and capricious as the CW machine is, the narrative could change at any time. The bounce may prove to be evanescent. But compared to where the Democrats were before Sunday, it’s fair to say that health care reform was not just good policy but good politics as well.

Republicans have been gnashing their teeth and rending their garments, lamenting the landmark passage of health care reform late Sunday night. The Tea Party wing of the party has been vowing that this isn’t the end of the fight over healthcare — it’s just the beginning.

While House Minority Leader John Boehner’s response to the health care bill (not least its tax hike on tanning salons) has been a “hell no,” the more pragmatic thinkers on the other side of the aisle have been bemoaning the GOP’s Waterloo. David “Axis of Evil” Frum, who coined the “Waterloo” phrase, has laid out some constructive responses Republicans can take up on health care — and he’s making more sense than most in the party of Lincoln.

Frum outlines four ideas that Republicans should get behind:

1) One of the worst things about the Democrats’ plan is the method of financing: an increase in tax on high-income earners. At first that tax bites only a very small number, but the new taxes will surely be applied to larger and larger portions of the American population over time.

Republicans champion lower taxes and faster economic growth. We need to start thinking now about how to get rid of these new taxes on work, saving and investment — if necessary by finding other sources of revenue, including carbon taxes.

2) We should quit defending employment-based health care. The leading Republican spokesman in the House on these issues, Rep. Paul Ryan, repeatedly complained during floor debate that the Obama plan would “dump” people out of employer-provided care into the exchanges. He said that as if it were a bad thing.

Yet free-market economists from Milton Friedman onward have identified employer-provided care as the original sin of American health care. Employers choose different policies for employees than those employees would choose for themselves. The cost is concealed.

Wages are depressed without employees understanding why. The day when every employee in America gets his or her insurance through an exchange will be a good day for market economics. It’s true that the exchanges are subsidized. So is employer-provided care, to the tune of almost $200 billion a year.

3) We should call for reducing regulation of the policies sold inside the health care exchanges. The Democrats’ plans require every policy sold within the exchanges to meet certain strict conditions.

American workers will lose the option of buying more basic but cheaper plans. It will be as if the only cable packages available were those that include all the premium channels. No bargains in that case. Republicans should press for more scope for insurers to cut prices if they think they can offer an attractive product that way.

4) The Democratic plan requires businesses with payrolls more than $500,000 to buy health insurance for their workers or face fines of $2,000 per worker. Could there be a worse time to heap this new mandate on smaller employers? Health insurance comes out of employee wages, plain and simple. Employers who do not offer health insurance must compete for labor against those who do — and presumably pay equivalent wages for equivalent work.

The first point is red-meat, tax-cutting rhetoric for the Republican base – not much to see there.

The third point is very broad, but middle ground could be easily reached. Everyone is against “over-regulation” but everyone is for “consumer protection.” Finding the middle ground to give patients the best set of alternatives should be a key goal as the regulations of health-exchanges are spelled out.

The fourth and final point, while a good-faith effort to protect engines of job creation from additional burden, misrepresents the small business coverage of the health care reform bill. The small business provisions of the bill exempt companies with less than 50 employees. The only way Frum’s payroll figure would make sense is if each employee was being paid $10,000 a year. At that point they’re eligible for health care subsidies of almost $50,000 for a family of four.

But it’s Frum’s second point that progressives should consider. Employer-based health care has been a long-term roadblock to innovation and job creation. (The whole story can be heard here.) Moving from a system where insurers try to sell packages to employer HR departments to one where patients can make choices themselves on the exchanges envisioned in Sunday’s historic bill can save up to 40 percent of what we’re spending on health care. But many of us getting health care through our employers don’t have the option to look to the exchanges. (The Washington Post has a handy tool you can use to see what your health care options will be come 2014.)

We should take sensible Republicans like Frum at their word and look to give more people the opportunity to embrace the benefits of choice that will be brought around by health exchanges. Maybe by getting behind an idea like the Wyden proposal we can get Republicans like Frum to embrace the president’s vision of working in a bipartisan manner.

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Amidst the understandable relief among Democrats at the passage of health care reform by the House, there’s been relatively little talk about the Democrats who still voted “no.” But 34 of them did, and fortunately, Nate Silver of 538.com took a close look at factors that might have explained the residual defections.

Nate concludes that Obama’s 2008 share of the vote in each members’ district, their general ideology, and their views on abortion, were the variables most highly correlated with a “no” vote. Variables that didn’t make as much difference include the competitiveness of the members’ own races, the number of uninsured in their districts and campaign contributions by insurance industry lobbyists.

It’s not that surprising that all 12 House Democrats representing districts where Obama won less than 40 percent of the vote in 2008 voted “no,” or that 61 of the 63 representing districts where Obama won over 60 percent voted “yea.” But 13 of the 30 from districts where Obama won more than 40 percent but less than a majority voted “no.”

Despite Bart Stupak’s decision to support the bill at the last minute, it’s significant that 24 of the 34 “no” votes in the House were members who voted for the original Stupak Amendment. Putting it another way, supporters of the Stupak Amendment split 37-24 in favor of the bill, while opponents split 182-10.

Ideologically, Nate uses the Poole-Rosenthal system to break down Democrats, and shows that “roughly the 110 most liberal Democrats voted for the health care bill.” That’s pretty amazing when you consider the unhappiness over the bill expressed by so many self-conscious progressives once the public option dropped out. Those categorized as “mainline Democrats” in the Poole-Rosenthal typology went for the bill 48-2, and “mainline-moderates” voted for it 44-7. In the most rightward category — “moderate-conservative” — members split right down the middle, 25-25.

All the other variables don’t quite have the salience of Obama vote share, ideology or abortion position. That should be at least mildly comforting to those Democrats who feared that pure political self-protection or insurance industry money were the major motivating factors for those voting “no.” And it’s very clear that the Democratic Left’s decision to support the bill despite concerns over its composition was absolutely crucial.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

Just over a month ago, Jon Chait of TNR predicted that conservatives would “freak out” if and when health reform legislation was indeed enacted. Aside from the fact that many of them have been drinking their own kool-aid about the allegedly totalitarian implications of a health care system that would maintain America’s uniquely capitalist orientation towards health services, conservatives spent far too much celebrating the death of reform to accept its resurrection.

I don’t believe in spending too much time on schadenfreude, but it has been interesting to see the absolute shock with which some conservatives and tea party activists have reacted to last night’s vote. My favorite reaction is this from Newt Gingrich, posted on the Human Events site:

This will not stand.No one should be confused about the outcome of Sunday’s vote

This is not the end of the fight it is the beginning of the fight.

The American people spoke decisively against a big government, high tax, Washington knows best, pro trial lawyer centralized bureaucratic health system

In every recent poll the vast majority of Americans opposed this monstrosity

Speaker Pelosi knew the country was against the bill. That is why she kept her members trapped in Washington and forced a vote on Sunday.

She knew if she let the members go home their constituents would convince them to vote no.

The Obama-Pelosi-Reid machine combined the radicalism of Alinsky, the corruption of Springfield and the machine power politics of Chicago.

Sunday was a pressured, bought, intimidated vote worthy of Hugo Chavez but unworthy of the United States of America.

It is hard to imagine how much pressure they brought to bear on congressman Stupak to get him to accept a cynical, phony clearly illegal and unconstitutional executive order on abortion. The ruthlessness and inhumanity of the Obama-Pelosi-Reid machine was most clearly on display in their public humiliation of Stupak.

Hugo Chavez! Saul Alinsky! A six-adjective sentence (“big government, high tax, Washington knows best, pro trial lawyer centralized bureaucratic health system”)! The end of civilization as we know it!

This is the same Newt Gingrich, mind you, who led a Republican-controlled Congress over the brink in 1995 and 1996 in the pursuit of extremely unpopular policies, arguing he had a mandate from the electorate to carry out a conservative revolution. And this is the same Newt Gingrich who increased the power of the Speaker’s Office to levels not seen since the days of “Czar” Reed, all but abolishing the seniority system and making loyalty to the Speaker and the Caucus’ agenda the only criterion for advancement. As for “intimidation”: wonder what Gingrich thought of those Republicans who placed photos of defeated 1994 Democrats on the seats of wavering Democratic members yesterday?

Gingrich’s crocodile tears for Bart Stupak are even more ludicrous. Stupak made himself a national celebrity by creating a symbolic fight over essentially inconsequential language differences in the House and Senate provisions on abortion. Yesterday he accepted a symbolic victory that was equally inconsequential, and folded his tent. I can’t imagine how Obama, Pelosi and Reid were guilty of “ruthlessness and inhumanity” by accepting his face-saving deal.

Newt was almost certainly playing for the galleries where his heart really lives these days: among potential 2012 caucus-goers in Iowa, a right-tilting crowd if ever there was one. And speaking of Iowa Republicans, Rep. Steve King outdid Gingrich in his remarks to a crowd of Tea Party protestors outside the Capitol last night:

You are the awesome American people,” said King. “If I could start a country with a bunch of people, they’d be the folks who were standing with us the last few days. Let’s hope we don’t have to do that! Let’s beat that other side to a pulp! Let’s chase them down. There’s going to be a reckoning!

It’s interesting how King alternates between a threat of violence and a threat to leave this godless socialist country behind and take the “real Americans” with him.

Let’s hope Republicans get a grip over the next few days.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

They took the scenic route, but they got there. After a year of negotiations, town halls, summits and shouting, Democrats have passed comprehensive health care reform legislation. The reform measure passed by the House Sunday now goes to President Obama’s desk for his signature. The House’s fixes inscribed in a separate bill will now be taken up by the Senate, and is expected to pass via the budget reconciliation process.

The outcome certainly affirms President Obama’s reputation as a clutch player – someone who’ll come through when you need him the most. Of course, the game probably wouldn’t have been that close if he hadn’t sat out for so long. This is where I hope the Obama administration has learned its lesson. Throughout the process, the president decided to take a hands-off approach, letting Congress do much of the work. It was a strategy borne of the failure of President Clinton’s plan, which was seen as a case of a White House completely oblivious to how Congress works. But Obama overcompensated, and the result was a process that seemed rudderless.

Worse, the hands-off approach extended to the bill’s selling. Confident that it was the right policy, the administration was complacent that the media and the public would see that it was the right thing to do as well. What we got instead was tea parties and town halls and “death panels.” In the absence of a permanent campaign to enlighten the public, misinformation ruled the day — and continues to infect public understanding of what just passed.

Which is why this is a good sign:

President Obama is set to begin an immediate public relations blitz aimed at turning around Americans’ opinion of the health-care bill.

Planning inside the West Wing for the post-vote period has proceeded quietly, even as the president and his allies on Capitol Hill were fighting for the measure’s passage.

Reshaping the legislation’s image will take place in three phases, White House aides said: the immediate aftermath; the seven months until the November midterm elections; and the several years that follow, during which many provisions in the measure will gradually take effect.

The plans for a PR blitz to sell the bill post-passage suggest an administration that has learned its lesson. Polls show that support for health care reform, particularly among Dems, began inching up the more Obama threw himself into its passage. It was a powerful reminder: when Obama commits himself to firing up the base, the base tends to get fired up. The promise of an all-out publicity campaign by the White House probably also assuaged a lot of wavering Democratic congressmen. As Nate Silver points out, one of the best predictors of whether a congressman would vote for the bill was whether they thought Obama would be an asset to them.

He may be known as No Drama Obama, but the president supplied plenty of it these last few weeks, with a bipartisan summit, rousing public appearances and quiet one-on-ones with recalcitrant Dems, culminating in a tour-de-force address to House Democrats on Saturday. The result was a pitch-perfect campaign that rallied progressives, bucked up public opinion, and emboldened lawmakers.

This administration has the best salesman in the country at the helm. When he talks, people – at least the converted and the persuadable – tend to listen. It seems like they’re finally starting to figure it out.