Not Wild About Harry

I felt that last night, Barack Obama made an intelligent and concrete case against mandates and for his vision of a universal health care plan focused on cost control. Then he went and dropped this mailer, which is structurally very similar to the infamous "Harry and Louise" ads from 1994.

The Obama campaign kept their hairstyles and barely even changed their clothing -- which is really quite unfair to Harry and Louise, who probably let go of the plaid years back. What's worse is that the argument they're making is applicable to any kind of universal health care arrangement, including the arrangements Obama himself will eventually have to adopt:

An "automatic sign-up," a la Medicare, would still force Americans into health care they may not want to pay for, or may feel overburdened by. Some seniors feel overburdened by Medicare's cost-sharing now. Meanwhile, Obama not only has a mandate for kids in his own health care plan -- what if the parents can't pay, one might ask? -- but he said, in last night's debate, "If people are gaming the system, there are ways we can address that. By, for example, making them pay some of the back premiums for not having gotten it in the first place." That, of course, is exactly what a mandate does. Gaming the system, in this context, means not purchasing health care. And Obama is now threatening to force them to pay back premiums. That's a harsher penalty than anything Clinton has proposed.

It's kind of a clichéd look, the couple at the kitchen table going over their bills. That's kind of why they're called "kitchen-table" concerns. I understand why many health care policy experts are flipping out about this, because Obama is using a right-wing frame against Hillary Clinton's health-care plan. But let's get some perspective. Mailers have been the attack du jour of this campaign. Clinton has dropped some atrocious mailers this cycle, the worst being the one suggesting Obama isn't sufficiently pro-choice, which is nuts. And that one had a definite impact in New Hampshire.

In addition, a mailer is not, you know, like the Nazis marching through Skokie, as Len Nichols of the New America Foundation said this morning.

Obama has the ability to make a decent and informed critique of a mandate-based plan. He doesn't have to resort to this. Then again, neither does any politician, but it seems to work so they keep doing it.