health insurance

Health insurance extension not guaranteed to bring new votes to Democrats

(THE WASHINGTON POST) - Despite breaking a decades-old legislative impasse with a bill that will eventually extend health insurance to more than 30 million people, it’s unlikely that the efforts of President Obama and congressional Democrats will soon yield them a huge new base of enthusiastic supporters.

There is no question that sweeping pieces of legislation that fundamentally impact everyday life have far-reaching political impacts. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “New Deal” programs, which included Social Security, helped connect a generation of voters to the Democratic Party. The expansions of civil rights to African Americans in the 1960s under Democratic presidents spurred a political realignment that helped move Southern whites to the GOP and further cemented the alliance of black voters and Democratic politicians.

But those changes did not come immediately, and experts have their doubts about the idea that the newly insured will become a long-term Democratic voting bloc. Most people who would get coverage under the legislation would not do so until at least 2014, two years after Obama will have sought a second term.

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