On Tuesday morning, a CNN panel searched for a reason why Democrats would embrace the unpopular position of including undocumented immigrants in their universal health care proposals, and disturbingly failed to consider the most obvious several reasons.
On CNN’s New Day, hosts Alisyn Camerota and John Berman led a brief discussion of the moment during Thursday night’s debate when all ten Democratic presidential candidates onstage raised their hands when asked “if your government plan would provide coverage for undocumented immigrants.”
Berman began by noting that in CNN’s latest poll, 59 percent of Americans said that health insurance coverage provided by the government should not be available to undocumented immigrants living in the United States, versus 38 percent who said it should.
“The poll says that a majority of voters don’t want what every candidate on stage there, pretty much, raise their hands for,” Berman said.
CNN political director David Chalian jumped right in and said that Democrats are “playing primary politics instead of general election politics,” and pointed out that “six in 10 Democrats believe that undocumented immigrants should indeed have health insurance from the government run program if there was one.”
The actual number, at 66 percent, is closer to seven in ten.
He said Democrats raised their hands because “they understand that in this moment, it’s a popular position to take with the party,” but that once a
“Yeah they’re going to have to rethink that position,” Camerota said, citing a New York Post cover that blared “This is how they lose” over a photo of the hands-up moment.
“Because Americans who are struggling to pay their health care bills are like ‘Huh? You’re going to offer this to undocumented immigrants?'” Camerota said.
Political analyst John Avlon then added, “This is a perfect snapshot of the Democrats’ greatest danger, which is that this is a much further to left field then we’ve seen even compared to past Democratic fields. And Donald Trump’s entire playbook is negative partisanship, they’re radical, they’re extreme.”
With the 3 seconds that remained in the segment, former Hillary Clinton adviser and current CNN resident liberal Jess McIntosh swooped in to make several devastating points.
“If your number one issue is making sure that undocumented immigrants don’t get health care, you’re voting for Donald Trump” was the first. One weakness in polling of this type is that it doesn’t measure intensity, so there’s no way of knowing, for example, how many independents see this as a make-or-break voting issue.
“What if your number one issue
“Yes, and I think there’s a lot of time to explain what the programs mean,” McIntosh replied. “You can’t have a national program for health insurance that leaves millions of people uninsured, we’re going to have to pay for that in the emergency room, it’s not fair in terms of spreading diseases to leave people untreated. Those are logical arguments that don’t necessarily work in 30 second sound bites.”
Now, as much as I love Jess McIntosh, and welcome her influence and insight and skills of persuasion on CNN, she is not going to be the one to shape the coverage of this presidential race. The news anchors who interview candidates and the political directors who literally shape coverage and the political analysts who pose themselves as the centrist adult voices in the room have vastly outsize influence, and this segment is a prime example of their utter failure.
I’m sure they are all decent people, and I can almost forgive their cynicism in not considering, even for a moment, that one or more of these candidates is taking this position because it is the right thing to do.
I can even forgive leaving it to Jess McIntosh to point out that if your animating issue is denying health care to your neighbors, you are an a-hole
But there’s little excuse for these two anchors, one political director, and one down-the-middle centrist adult-in-the-room political analyst not to even raise the question of whether this position might possibly be the right thing to do.
For example, why didn’t any of the people whose job it is to report facts bring up the fact that American taxpayers already subsidize uncompensated care for undocumented immigrants to the tune of almost $20 billion a year?
And why didn’t Chalian politically direct his polling unit to ask the more accurate question “Do you think health insurance coverage provided by the government should be available to undocumented immigrants living in the United States, or would you rather continue paying $20 billion a year in uncompensated care for those immigrants for less effective and more expensive care?”
Why didn’t anyone cite the CNN report that shows undocumented immigrants pay billions in federal taxes every year, or mention that Democrats also favor granting status to millions of undocumented immigrants that would allow even more of them to pay taxes?
And why didn’t any of them mention this other CNN report that shows that people who don’t have health insurance, who can only rely on emergency rooms for care, die by
These aren’t opinions, they’re facts that, for the most part, have already been reported by CNN. And they are facts which, if reported in the context of a presidential campaign — the most important context imaginable — could have a real impact on the poll numbers that these folks are wringing their hands about.
I don’t know why all ten of those Democratic candidates raised their hands either, I just hope they all have the command of facts that Jess McIntosh demonstrated in those 3 seconds. And I hope the Bermans and Camerotas and Chalians and Avlons of the world read this, and do better.
Watch the clip above, via CNN.