About That Whole Mandate Thing

Kudos to McClatchy for not only conducting a poll that finds a solid majority of Americans want to keep health care reform or improve it, not repeal it, but kudos for mentioning that fact in the story as well as part of a greater narrative that the GOP does not have a mandate.

A majority of Americans want the Congress to keep the new health care law or actually expand it, despite Republican claims that they have a mandate from the people to kill it, according to a new McClatchy-Marist poll.

The post-election survey showed that 51 percent of registered voters want to keep the law or change it to do more, while 44 percent want to change it to do less or repeal it altogether.

Driving support for the law: Voters by margins of 2-1 or greater want to keep some of its best-known benefits, such as barring insurers from denying coverage for pre-existing conditions. One thing they don't like: the mandate that everyone must buy insurance. 

Of course it's complicated.  Everything is.  But the three big lame duck issues, the Bush tax cuts, health care reform, and repealing DADT are pretty much an even split.  It's not an overwhelming mandate anymore than Bush thought he had in 2004.

So of course the GOP is going to overreach on this.