I'm trying hard to understand...

...where all this anger is coming from that's on display at these town halls. At first I thought these people were the same ones that showed up for the tea parties on April 15 and at some of the Republican rallies last fall. I didn't take them too seriously then. I thought the tea baggers were just a bunch of eccentric cranks and that many of the people at the McCain and Palin rallies (like the old lady that told McCain that Obama was an Arab) were just uninformed racists.

So when the town halls began I figured that it was just an Astro Turf movement backed by the opponents of health care reform. I don't think that that's entirely wrong, but after watching a fair amount of these people on TV, I've decided that there are a lot of genuinely angry (and fearful) people out there. I think a lot of them have been stirred up by the right wing and fed a lot of misinformation, but there had to be something there in the first place to make them so ripe for the stirring. And the best answer I can come up with is James Carville's famous advice to candidate Bill Clinton: It's the economy, stupid.

And the truth is that the economy has been weak since the spring of 2000, when the Nasdaq and dot.com bubbles burst. The economy went into recession and despite the Bush tax cuts and the stock market and housing bubbles that followed, employment and wages never regained the levels they reached in the 1990s. And after the current recession began in 2007, many people saw that not only had much of their wealth disappeared but in many cases their jobs as well. To add insult to injury, the federal government had to bail out Wall Street, the automakers, and many homeowners facing foreclosure (whatever happened to that program, anyway?). Next came huge bonuses to the executives at banks taking TARP money and a record stimulus bill that was considered by many to be the worst example of Washington pork. I think the famous rant by Rick Santelli on CNBC (and the original inspiration for the tea parties) was a revealing glimpse into the public's psyche. People like Rick, who played by the rules and didn't get overextended, felt that they were being asked to bail out everyone else's profligate behavior. And they had a point and a right to be angry. But the problem was that even though the Wall Street bailout was a bailout of the most egregious offenders, it was even more importantly a bailout of the financial system. As bad as it felt and as unfair as it seemed, it was the right thing to do to bail out America and prevent another Great Depression. The same is true for the people who were upside-down in their mortgages. Even though Rick Santelli was made to feel like the prodigal son's brother, it was actually Rick that was being bailed out in a perverse way, because the last thing he would want would be to live in a neighborhood with abandoned houses that would erode the value of his own house. It's not unlike having your neighbor's house catch fire. You may not want to help pay for the firefighters but it's ultimately in your interest to do so to prevent the fire from spreading to your own home.

So the average guy lost much of his retirement funds in the stock market, much of the equity in his home, and maybe even his job (and health insurance). He's understandably scared for his family's future. And fear is often manifested by anger. Then he had to sit back and watch everyone else get bailed out with his money, including those greedy, overpaid guys on Wall Street that started this mess in the first place. I thought given this environment that the average guy would jump at health care reform. Boy was I wrong. Rather than seeing it as health insurance reform (a term which Obama has now latched onto, perhaps too late), the average guy sees it as just another $1 trillion entitlement for someone else that, again, he has to pay for. No wonder they're so angry. In hindsight, the conditions and timing were perfect for a little misinformation from the opponents of reform to stir the masses into open rebellion.

But my guess is that the Democrats will still pass some form of health care reform this fall, albeit a watered-down version. The lesson of 1993-94 is clear: when you have a majority on the Hill and control of the White House, failure is not an option. The Dems will lose seats in 2010, as expected, but could come roaring back as the economy recovers. Obama should get reelected in 2012 and the Democrats should gain back some of the seats lost in the mid-terms. It would be almost five years after the start of the recession and the Fed's easy monetary policy and the record stimulus should have kicked in by then. (If not, we're really in trouble.) But I think the economy will be just fine; in fact, it could even outdo the Reagan recovery. (Remember that the stock market didn't begin its rally until August, 1982, long after the tax cuts went into effect. Unemployment remained stubbornly high.) Health care reform will be built upon in the meantime, and as for all that anger, it could fade into memory, like the anti-war protests of the '60s and '70s. ("Remember that guy that brought a gun to the Obama rally in 2009? What ever happened to him?") Oh, and the Republicans? There will be even fewer of them and the ones remaining will be even more irrelevant than today.