Hillarysworld

While the American public remains broadly supportive of the goals for health reform, a new Rasmussen poll shows that Congress' roadmap for getting there is becoming less and less popular by the week.

Back in late June, 50 percent of respondents supported the bill(s) working through Congress, while 45 percent were opposed.  Today the numbers are 42 percent in favor, 53 percent opposed.  More troubling for proponents of reform, the intensity of opposition to the reform is high, with 44 percent of respondents strongly opposing the effort, while only 26 percent strongly support it.

This is beginning to remind me of the debate on social security, where voters were broadly in favor of measures such as "shoring up social security," and even in favor of the actual plan making its way through Congress: voluntary partial accounts restricted to younger voters.  But the perception of what the plan contained got away from the reality, and it floundered.

It is way too early to predict doom for health care reform, even with a public option.  There's too much of a growing perception that failure to pass it will wreck Obama's Presidency (hint: Obama's Presidency will rise and fall with the economy, just like almost every President's).  But these numbers are sobering, and could indicate real problems for 2010 if Congress rams through a bill that is perceived poorly by the public.