Published: October 31, 2009 11:32 pm      

Bayh right in the middle of debate

Indiana’s junior senator seems to have found himself in the middle of the national health care debate.

Conservatives are pointing to Evan Bayh as an example other Democrats might do well to emulate. They see his opposition to a public option as a responsible position. He’s standing up to his big-spending colleagues in the Democratic Party.

Liberals, on the other hand, see Bayh as abandoning his base, and they’ve made the threat that he could lose support for his re-election campaign next year if he ends up siding with the Republicans on this fight.

The numbers might be on their side.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee and a group called Democracy for America last week released results of a survey finding that Indiana voters favor a public option by a margin of 52 percent to 42 percent. The survey found independents favoring it by an even larger margin, 59 percent to 33 percent.

In the same survey, 35 percent of independents responded that they would be less likely to vote for Bayh next fall if he joined Republicans in filibustering a public option. That compares to 13 percent who said they would be more likely to support him.

Among Democrats, the survey put the margin at 51 percent to 7 percent.

At the same time, 54 percent of Democrats said support of a filibuster would make them less likely to support Bayh in the primary, compared to 6 percent who said they would be more likely.

Of course, what people say in a survey and what they do in the voting booth might be two different things.

It seems unlikely that Bayh will face a serious challenge in the primary, and it seems even less likely that those in favor of health care reform will be voting Republican next year.

Bayh’s appeal has always been to moderate voters, and his position on health care would seem to line up with that approach.

He has promised to support moving forward with a debate on the Senate floor, and he has said he will work hard to craft what he calls “affordable legislation that reduces the deficit and lowers health care costs for Indiana families and small businesses.”

One thing Bayh might want to keep in mind is another result of that same survey: Hoosiers aren’t huge fans of insurance companies.

Seventy-seven percent of those responding to the survey said they believed insurance companies put profit above the health of patients. That’s compared to 11 percent who said they believed companies put patients’ health first.

And here’s another point worth noting: Fifty-two percent of those responding said they thought Bayh’s $1.5 million in campaign contributions from health and insurance interests hurt his judgment on health care. That compares to 29 percent who said they didn’t believe those contributions hurt his judgment on the issue.

For Bayh, the trick in this debate will be to nail down a compromise without seeming to move too far left or too far right of center.

If you can trust the numbers, the majority of Bayh’s constituents do want some form of health care reform.

They want a system that will focus on the health of Hoosiers and not on the bottom lines of insurance companies. They would seem to favor some form of public option.

And if they don’t get what they want, a lot of voters say they might take it out on Bayh at the polls next year.

As it now stands, Bayh can pretty much count on a motivated conservative base. He isn’t likely to get many of those votes regardless of how this debate comes out.

The fight, as it always is, will be over the moderates. Bayh needs to keep the moderates happy while making sure he doesn’t make the liberals so mad they stay home.

• Kelly Hawes is managing editor of the Pharos-Tribune. He can be reached at 574-732-5155 or kelly.hawes@pharostribune.com.