Progress Illinois

Front and center during the primaries, the Tribune's Jill Zuckman reports that health care has receded from the presidential campaign, eclipsed by other concerns:

The continual tussle between the two presumptive presidential nominees — Obama and McCain — has largely centered recently on national security and the high price of gasoline. Public opinion polls have shown that among the top issues of concern to Americans, health care is languishing far behind the economy, the war and the price of gas. One CBS poll from July put voter interest in health care at just 3 percent. In August, it was at 8 percent.

Obama's spokesman Bill Burton counters, claiming the problem is the reluctance of the press to cover the issue, not that voters don't care about it. But if this is the case, as The New Republic's Jon Cohn blogs, it should be Obama pushing the agenda forward:

But candidates aren't exactly powerless to shape the agenda. If Obama wanted to shift the conversation back towards health care, all it would take would be a few advertisements, maybe a major policy speech, plus a little one-on-one promotion to reporters.

FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver agrees that Obama hasn't pushed as hard as he can on health care, a missed opportunity considering the gravity of the recession this election cycle and John McCain's decidedly weaker plan. Democrats generally run about 20 points better than the GOP on health care, jobs, and Social Security. A recent Rasmussen survey gives Obama just a five-point edge. Silver suspects the gap derives from Obama's relative silence on the issue -- the last time the Obama campaign highlighted universal health care in one of its press releases was in April. With roughly two-thirds of Americans favoring some form of insurance universality, now is the time to pounce.

If Obama does decide to push more forcefully, framing the issue will become crucial. He might want to tout his experience in Springfield, which resulted in some very meaningful legislation. Cohn chronicled this record for TNR earlier this year:

Time after time, Obama brought adversaries into the process early, heard out their concerns, then fashioned compromises many of them ultimately supported. In other words, he used the very strategy he's been describing on the campaign trail--the one giving people like me such angst. And yet, if you talk to liberals in Springfield, the ones who've spent decades fighting for universal health care, you don't hear a lot of disappointment with him. As far as they are concerned, Obama's signature inclusiveness was always a means to an end--a way to push the limits of reform rather than accept them. And, they say, it worked.

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