Van Hollen: Health Care Bill Is Key To Electoral Success

Townhall Staff | November 13, 2009 8:53 AM

Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Chris Van Hollen (Md.) said that he was confident Democrats would do well in the 2010 mid-term elections... as long as the health care bill was passed.

Here's Van Hollen at Bloomberg’s Washington Summit:

The political fortunes of the entire Caucus are tied together in getting this passed.

It's unsurprising that the head of the DCCC expressed a high level of confidence in his party in upcoming elections. But the fact that he thinks that success is so tied up in success of the health care bill is striking. Rasmussen puts Americans' support of health care reform at 45 in favor of and 52 opposed; the Washington Post has those numbers at 45 and 48, respectively.

Van Hollen essentially confirmed that health care is such a hot-button issue with so many Democratic constituents that the DCCC believes it is their achilles heel. The question is whether that belief is shared by a majority of the American people.