Krugman on the politics of the public option -- and how it can prevent a backlash

I do wish someone at the White House (e.g., the President) would heed the advice of Paul Krugman every now and then. Today, he has an excellent post titled, Why the public option matters, which rebuts some of the arguments and excuses used against that proposal. It matters for several reasons, but, importantly, Krugman offers some sage advice on the political need for a public option:

Third — and this is where I am getting a very bad feeling about the idea of throwing in the towel on the public option — is the politics. Remember, to make reform work we have to have an individual mandate. And everything I see says that there will be a major backlash against the idea of forcing people to buy insurance from the existing companies. That backlash was part of what got Obama the nomination! Having the public option offers a defense against that backlash.

What worries me is not so much that the backlash would stop reform from passing, as that it would store up trouble for the not-too-distant future. Imagine that reform passes, but that premiums shoot up (or even keep rising at the rates of the past decade.) Then you could all too easily have many people blaming Obama et al for forcing them into this increasingly unaffordable system. A trigger might fix this — but the funny thing about such triggers is that they almost never get pulled.

Let me add a sort of larger point: aside from the essentially circular political arguments — centrist Democrats insisting that the public option must be dropped to get the votes of centrist Democrats — the argument against the public option boils down to the fact that it’s bad because it is, horrors, a government program. And sooner or later Democrats have to take a stand against Reaganism — against the presumption that if the government does it, it’s bad.

As usual, many of the professional Democrats in D.C. (members, staffers and political consultants) are misreading the politics of the public option issue. In fact, the public option can actually help politically, but that defies the "conventional wisdom" among the D.C. crowd. Too many of the professional Democrats still cower when the GOPers attack and they always try to accommodate the pundits. They're usually wrong. And, on this issue, their mistake could be very costly to Democrats.

The public option polls very well, still, even after all the attacks on it. Yesterday, I posted an excerpt from Markos' latest column in The Hill, the base expects Obama and the Democrats to deliver:

If Democrats abandon the public option, they risk a demoralized, cynical base, one unwilling to do the work to get Democrats elected and which will stay home on Election Day.

That's right.

So, dropping the public option could be a double whammy: It would demoralize the base and there would be nothing in place when insurers start jacking up rates. The political brain trust at the White House and on Capitol Hill should factor that in to their strategy.