By talking openly about redistribution, Baucus and others have gone seriously off message. Democrats knew there was no way they could ever sell a national healthcare bill to a skeptical public by basing their case on income inequality. That's one reason they went to such lengths to argue -- preposterously, in the view of most Americans -- that the bill could cover 32 million currently uninsured people and still save the taxpayers money.
After Baucus' statement, I asked a Democratic strategist (who asked to remain nameless) whether fighting income inequality was one of his goals in supporting the legislation. Never, he said. "That's what the tax code is for."
"It was not to take something away from rich people; it was to provide something to people without coverage," he continued, making a distinction between striving for universal coverage and seeking to redistribute income. But he quickly saw that Democrats talking about redistribution could be politically damaging, echoing the controversy that erupted when candidate Obama famously told Ohio plumber Joe Wurzelbacher, "When you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody."
"'Redistribution' is an easy charge to make," the Democrat said. "I'm not surprised that it's an argument critics make; what I'm surprised at is that Democrats are making it."
This week, the DNC group Organizing for America offered a commemorative certificate to supporters who helped pass the healthcare bill. The certificate said, "We achieved the dream of generations -- high-quality, affordable health care is no longer the privilege of a few but the right of all."
The privilege of a few? It is widely accepted that about 85 percent of all Americans have healthcare coverage, and the overwhelming majority are happy with it. There's simply no way anyone could plausibly claim that health coverage is the privilege of a few.
And yet that is the bedrock belief of some who supported the healthcare makeover. So it's no wonder that we're hearing about health care as the redistribution of income. Of course, we're only hearing it after the bill has passed.