http://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=128314&messages=144&page=1&desc=yes#2877311

By the way, Sawzaw, I am not a Democrat myself. So I don't have any personal sense of identification with either party. So it's quite easy for me to criticize both parties when I don't like what they do.

I'm not the one who is talking about "the Democrats" as if they were a Borg collective, Sawzaw. That's what you're doing. Heroes is your word. I think the Democrats did a shitty job of passing a health care reform bill. But it's the best one we've got, so they get credit for at least doing that much. Republicans have done nothing whatever except try to preserve the status quo. If this new law makes it possible for me and JtS to get health insurance (and I expect that it will), it could save our lives. So those who voted for it (the vast majority of Democrats) will get credit from me for saving our lives.

In most of the polls taken during the time health care reform was being worked on, most of the people were in favor of it most of the time. You're cherry picking and only considering the polls that support your contention that most people don't want health care reform. But if you're going to quote percentages (which you really can't do and be telling the truth), you need to look at all of the polls and use an aggregate of the numbers. Most of the people favored what the Democrats were doing most of time. And a large percentage of the people in the polls that showed a majority of people against, were against because the bill in question didn't offer a public option. When asked about a public option, the majority of those polled consistently said they were in favor, and when asked if they would support the proposed bill if it offered a public option, the majority of people consistently said they would support the bill. So you're just flat out wrong that the majority of people don't support health care reform.

And now, after the bill has become law, a plurality of people have said they are glad it passed. So your 50.8% number (if it is from the poll I am thinking of), don't oppose health care reform, they just want the law to go farther than it does, and they either want single payer not for profit, or they want a public option. When the people who feel that way are removed from that number a minority of people oppose the bill.

There are more people who are glad the law passed than there are people who are not glad the law passed. That's a fact. If the law included a public option, there would be a clear majority of people who would say they supported the new law. When people see in what ways their lives are positively impacted by the new law, the people who made it happen will be rewarded at the polls in future elections. Democrats like my representative, who worked against it, might not fare so well, however, and I'm going to do my part to make sure that happens.