Armchair Strategist: Could McCain Have Won Last November?

I am not a political strategist. I have written a few posts identifying some tactical mistakes McCain made and issues and approaches for future campaigns (e.g., "The Road to 2012"). [Whereas some of the points and arguments raised in this post are familiar, the context and discussion are different.] But if I had been running the McCain campaign, what would I have done differently? And would it have worked?

Answering the second question is inherently unknowable. Certainly the Obama campaign would have adjusted its tactics in response to alternate approaches. Other things were beyond McCain's control: the economic tsunami, his age, his past voting record and innumerable speeches and appearances, a historical bias towards White House turnover every 8 years, and President Bush's unpopularity and record.

The fact is, McCain held leads over Obama at multiple points in national polls before the tsunami, so his defeat was not inevitable. A 7-point margin of victory, given the circumstances, was not a large difference. It simply requires switching one vote out of 25. (Of course, Gore and Kerry were defeated by much narrower differences.) Note, for instance, McCain once led Obama by at least 10 points in Florida. The Obama campaign then saturated the airwaves with ads, with effectively no response from the McCain campaign.  and flipped the lead. I was also puzzled by the campaign's inability to adapt Hillary Clinton's winning strategy against Obama in the Pennsylvania primary and other states.

A Critique of the McCain Campaign

Certainly the McCain campaign executed poorly, and it goes beyond weak or ineffectual responses to Obama swing state campaigns. The campaign fundraising, use of information technology and organization were uncompetitive,  the campaign did not make good use of McCain's time after securing the nomination to the convention, McCain's messages and programs were too predictable and similar to Bush's, and some of strategic attacks were ill-focused, eclectic (e.g., the sex education kerfuffle) and seat-of-the-pants/opportunistic (Joe the Plumber). It's not clear to me why the campaign focused so much on the thin evidence of Obama's sporadic appearances with a 60's radical and professor (Bill Ayers) instead of a more established foundation in notorious Chicago politics; the campaign also failed to promote John McCain's legendary straight talk reputation and contrast it effectively with Obama's abstract meandering and doublespeak. I personally believed that many of the McCain campaign spots were overproduced and gimmicky (e.g., the 3-dimensional ads) and really didn't fit McCain's plain-spoken message and traditional conservative values (such as self-reliance, hard work, and perseverance).

--McCain's Mistakes During the General Election Campaign. Campaign strategist and advisor Steve Schmidt clearly had problems beyond acknowledged missteps on sex education and Bill Ayers. I have written some posts criticizing McCain's unforced errors, including:

•  his unilateral suspension of his campaign in a dubious attempt to facilitate passage of TARP legislation
•  his failure to respond strategically to Obama's broken promise on general election funding (leaving McCain at a permanent funding disadvantage in every prospective swing state)
• the ill-advised selection of Sarah Palin at running mate, which undermined his key expertise and experience argument against Obama. 

--McCain's Debate Performance. McCain's debate performance was not sharp; even when he had Obama on the ropes (e.g., Obama's morally indefensible stonewalling of the Illinois Born Alive Infant Protection Act), he failed to put him away. The issue of Bill Ayers was weakly handled, with Obama easily marginalizing his contacts with Bill Ayers (not to mention the obvious counterpoint that McCain had his own problems with politically inconvenient supporters (e.g., Rev. Hagee)). McCain's points and approaches were predictable; what he needed to do was to catch Obama off-stride with some novel arguments or to pose some open-ended questions, which might get Obama into one of his trademark convoluted abstract responses, characteristic of his Democratic debate performances. McCain also let several Obama charges (e.g., deregulation, Bush deficits and Iraq expenditures, Wall Street greed, health care, etc., while extolling the virtues of the Clinton economy) go without a strong response. Even the progressive Dissent Magazine points up that Clinton piled up a huge federal deficit  (a trillion dollars) during the first 6 years of his Presidency, and many things for which Obama and others have criticized the Bush Administration were a logical extension of economic policies and facts under the Clinton Administration (e.g., free trade, slow wage growth, predatory lending, asset bubbles, and deregulation of financial services). Keep in mind that the collapse of Long-Term Capital Management, a hedge fund that collapsed over its derivative trades, occurred during the Clinton Administration's watch; what's particularly egregious over Obama's use of the issue is that two of his own top economic advisors (Rubin and Summers) opposed strong federal regulation over the derivatives market.

As an aside, I do believe that there is good reason to make derivative transactions more transparent, including public/regulatory disclosure of related financial hedges (margin, collateral, etc.) One can argue that raising reserves and public disclosure discourages speculation and reduces uncertainty that transactions will be honored in good faith. But, as a matter of principle, I am sympathetic to former Senator Phil Gramm's viewpoint:

[Phil Gramm] examined financial panics of the 19th century, concluding that policy makers and economists had repeatedly misread events to justify burdensome regulation.

“There is always a revisionist history that tries to claim that the system has failed and what we need to do is have government run things,” he said.

--McCain's Failure to Address Mounting Public Concern With the Deficit. McCain's preoccupation with earmarks is understandable, but its usefulness as a campaign issue is questionable since Congressional Republicans other than McCain have been some of the worst offenders, Obama co-opted the issue by changing his position just in time for the Presidential campaign, and pointed out earmarks only amount to a minor percentage of federal expenditures. Furthermore, Obama attempted to preempt McCain's use of the deficit critique by reminding voters that Bush never balanced the budget during his terms in office. [Obama conveniently fails to point out Democrats were arguing there wasn't enough money in the bills...] 

Of course, near-trillion dollar stimulus and health care legislation in the middle of a recession and federal expenditures peaking at over 40% of GDP (for the first time since WWII), Obama's implicit argument that there wasn't a qualitative difference between the GOP and the Democrats on federal spending always was disingenuous. McCain needed to address his position on the Bush deficits and the massive reorganization and funding of Homeland Security, how he would streamline the government to operate more efficiently (and demand more than token moves against the deficit, e.g., Obama initiatives of $17B in spending or $100M in administrative cuts), and he should have been more outspoken in favor of House GOP resistance to the massive federal intervention of TARP legislation last year (not to mention demanding greater transparency of the Federal Reserve).

--McCain's Nuanced Political Stands. McCain always irritated fellow conservatives by things like using typically Democratic/progressive class warfare reasons in his initial opposition to the Bush tax cuts, his support of a version of cap and trade, his initial reluctance to support proactive border security,  and his citing as an inspiration Teddy Roosevelt, whom migrated from a conservative to a more progressive point of view during his Presidency. He also was a late convert to the cause of offshore drilling in coastal areas and even after the selection of Sarah Palin, did not back off his opposition to ANWR energy exploration. Despite Obama charges otherwise, McCain had a mixed record on regulation. Both Obama and McCain had populist streaks; McCain needed to do more to contrast his political approach with Obama's philosophy; it was embarrassing for McCain to come up with a mortgage plan that the Obama campaign argued was similar to its own.

--McCain's Inability to Leverage His "Straight Talk" Reputation. I think that the American people knew that Obama's promises to cut taxes (or cut checks) for 95% of working Americans, return the top tax bracket rates to those of the Clinton era (about 5 percentage points higher), seriously escalating domestic spending while playing lip service to the deficit, didn't add up. (Doesn't it seem like just yesterday when they were criticizing the amount being spent in Iraq--before trillion-dollar stimulus and health care programs came along? And, by the way, we aren't out of Iraq yet, but that didn't phase the Democrats' spending spree.)

The American people understand that tough times often call for shared sacrifice. They did not necessarily want or expect the major Presidential candidates to get into a pandering war to secure their votes. I don't think that anyone really expects to close a deficit gap without some combination of painful spending cuts and tax increases. The devil is in the details, of course, and the Democrats would have loved to pin McCain down on spending cuts in order to solicit the support of target companies and workers. (The Democrats did that in sabotaging Bush's attempt to fix social security in 2005.) 

Let's take as a point of discussion how the Democrats have tried to spin the earlier part of this year: Obama took over a disaster, teetering on the edge of Depression. In fact, the TARP legislation was passed before the election, and credit did not freeze. The unemployment rate was 7.6% in January; it is up over 2 percentage points since then--more than 6 months after passage of the stimulus bill. In fact, Democrats hyped the so-called stimulus bill, claiming it would keep unemployment from exceeding 8%. But the deception goes beyond that; it also sold the stimulus package on a sense of urgency--when, in fact, less than 25% had been spent in the first 6 months--and it pushed infrastructure spending as economic miracle grow (as if building a Bridge to Nowhere would pay for itself!) It also spun state bailout money as stimulus (as if the jobs "saved" this year don't have to be funded next year...)  And it argued for for bailing out GM and Chrysler over industry-destroying bankruptcy--and then, as the bailout money only deferred the day of reckoning, it suddenly realized that bankruptcy was not so bad (although Obama's concept of bankruptcy is to "spread the wealth" from bondholders to unions).

--McCain Campaign's Failure to Adapt. Obama in a number of respects attempted to adjust to adverse developments, such as the high cost of oil by softening his stands against offshore exploration and gun ownership and structuring a competing tax package that undercut McCain's for most taxpayers. To be frank, the pattern of Democrats to run left during the primaries (to avoid alienating progressive activists) and then to move to the center is not exactly a new phenomenon. 

Now one could hardly call McCain's response to the economic tsunami conservative, but I would have liked to have seen McCain tailor his ad campaign emphasizing voter priorities (versus the former radical Bill Ayers and other negative attacks) and less costly, more focused change and eliminating government scope creep. He could have answered Obama's rhetoric of a post-partisan Washington by making a preemptive announcement of bipartisan members of his own cabinet. Appearances late in the campaign, particularly involving running mate Sarah Palin, seemed aimed more at motivating the media conservative base than moving to the center, where the key swing voters were.

An Alternative Approach

--Implement a More Diversified, Flexible, Less Predictable Political Strategy. What McCain needed to do was to get away from a Reagan-formula campaign. Using a baseball analogy, one of the best weapons a baseball pitcher has is to keep the batter guessing--what pitch at what location and speed; even an average batter will find success if he is able to predict the next pitch. I think, particularly given the age issue, McCain needed to show this wasn't your grandfather's GOP, but a GOP of fresh, innovative ideas, not Obama's false assertion of the party of "no" and no ideas. For example, McCain should have considered adopting some of the ideas former Speaker Newt Gingrich has proposed or Representative Paul Ryan's "Roadmap for America's Future".


--Focus on McCain's Health and Vigor to Combat the Age Issue. One of the first rules of writing is to "know your audience". Understand their concerns and address them from the get-go. For instance, there was a concern about McCain's age. Now certainly the McCain campaign did a good job of getting his feisty 96-year-old mother Roberta in front of the camera. I would have had clips all over the airwaves showing McCain walking briskly through airports, luggage in hand, hiking in the Grand Canyon, etc.

--A Pro-Economic Growth Policy. The progressive demagoguery and promotion of massive government regulation throws the baby out with the bathwater. Economic growth depends on legitimate risk taking, e.g., venture capitalists investing in emerging companies. Bankruptcies in businesses and households occur even during periods of economic expansion. One lesson we've learned over the past generation is that global investing is apolitical; it seeks to invest where, all other things held equal, resources and infrastructure are available and the government burden of taxes, mandates and regulations is less obtrusive. McCain, in my view, should have focused on two points: the issue is not so much with innovative financial products as with incompetent participants in the markets taking on unreasonable risks--you will never be able to outlaw managerial stupidity, no matter how many restrictions on economic liberty you implement; second, the progressive attempts to respond to issues are always "a day late and a dollar short". Tell me, where were credit rating bureaus, the accountants, state and federal regulators, etc.? Where were the progressive Chicken Littles on Capitol Hill, crying about the impending doom due to "greedy Wall Street" during the housing bubble (versus an ex post facto scapegoating for what everybody else missed, too, including the Federal Reserve--when did Greenspan talk about "irrational exuberance" of the housing market?)?  When were the Democrats looking to clamp down on mortgage approvals to high-risk applicants? Where were they calling to attention implicitly government-backed mortgage-backed securities unduly weighted in volatile real estate market notes (e.g., California, Las Vegas, Florida, etc.)?

The big problem I have with the progressive critiques is they have not provided a solid case why existing regulations or oversight failed to anticipate the economic tsunami and addressed the relevant shortcomings; conservatives for years have been arguing about the increasing complexity (and according lack of responsibility and accountability) of regulation across various government agencies. It took the tragedies of 9/11 to highlight the problem of integration and turf battles among various intelligence and law enforcement agencies.So when the progressives want to scapegoat investors because AIG, for instance, wrote too many credit default swaps relative to its reserves or otherwise failed to hedge their position or contain their risk, it's ridiculous. Why did it take the federal government until the economic tsunami to determine that AIG was "too big to fail" and was not transparent about the kinds of risks to its business? I, as a conservative, would have had no problem with AIG going into bankruptcy, its relevant management being fired, and Goldman Sachs being unable to be made whole on the swaps it was holding.

In addition, McCain should have focused on the importance of business (not just household) tax incentives. He did note uncompetitive higher tax brackets, but he should have also focused on tactics like accelerating depreciation, cutting payroll taxes, freezing tax rates on the job creator classes, and in providing a more optimal simpler, more consistent environment for business investment with a moratorium on discussion of taxes, regulations, etc. in the middle of a deep recession (to reduce analysis paralysis and uncertainty over progressive initiatives to "fix" the economy).

--Less Emphasis on Biography/More on Conservative Goals. I also would have deemphasized dated clips of his Vietnam era days (this was also a mistake Kerry made during his campaign); voters have more of a "what have you done for me lately" perspective, not to mention the familiar disclaimer known to every investor: "past performance does not guarantee future results". Among other things, the POW clips pointed out the age issue, paradoxically reflected more about the past during a change election, and were largely pushing on a string; people concerned about military and foreign policy already knew about John and his record.

I would have preferred more elaboration of what George H.W. Bush famously referred to as "the vision thing". McCain should have explained better what motivated him to be conservative and why he wanted to be President. We needed to hear more about America as the land of opportunity and economic freedom, however well-intentioned, progressives' paternalistic, government-sponsored solutions in search of a problem are.

I also would have liked to hear McCain emphasize lessons learned from Iraq, including avoiding a disproportionate deployment of American forces and nation building, which would have further distinguished him from Bush.

--A Conservative Critique of a Predictable Progressive Platform. Many of the campaign issues were familiar retreads over the past 40 years: class warfare, allegations of Big Business cronyism, union protectionism, expansion of the social welfare net, government takeover of the health care sector, increased government obtrusiveness, ecological restrictions on domestic resource development and energy generation, etc. Conservatives need to point out the hubris in Obama deciding that ideological progressives understand the economics and profit potential of green energy, education and health care better than the private sector; that progressive policies of high business income, savings and investment taxes and obtrusive government reporting and regulations directly affect job-creating business creation and expansion; and that trade obstructionism, abusive lawsuits, an anti-competitive Byzantine system of state insurance mandates, and archaic work rules and tenure in education, all reflecting Democratic special interest constituencies, have adverse impacts on consumer prices, health care costs, exports and related job growth, and school performance. Conservatives have to hold progressives' feet to the fire in terms of future business growth-inhibiting effects of the cumulative national debt, program coverage creep (e.g., SCHIP) (i.e., government market share of ordinary expenses of middle-class Americans), misleading language (e.g., Obama's terming education expenditures as "investments"), out-of-control growth in bureaucracy and staffing of an increasing portfolio of government programs, and the law of unintended consequences, e.g., possible repercussions in business-based health care coverage due to a dubious government overhaul of health care (versus more targeted reforms, such as consumer vested interest in cost containment, expanding and strengthening assigned risk pools and catastrophic coverage).

I prefer using a metaphor of the federal government conglomerate, where paternalistic progressive empire-building at the federal level has outstripped the Executive Branch's ability to effectively manage it (hence, Obama's unprecedented use of unaccountable czars, which I regard as an unconstitutional power grab at the expense of the Legislative Branch's historical advise and consent responsibilities). When a conglomerate starts losing money and focus, what we  typically look to do is to spin-off or shut down those units which don't focus on core competencies--things like national defense and foreign policy, public health and safety, national financial services, public resource and infrastructure management, and our federal judiciary and interstate regulation.

Finally, I would have made it clear that the biggest risk during an economic crisis would be to misdiagnose the problem, provide an ill-suited, counterproductive response and introduce uncertainty about the nature and extent of government intervention in the private sector. Not only does it waste precious American treasure, but it defers the day of reckoning, the bottoming of the economy, and recovery.

--A Conservative Critique of the Bush Administration and Change Message. Even as it became clear that the surge policy in Iraq was working, President Bush's approval ratings did not recover to the same extent as Reagan's and Clinton's towards the end of his term. The Democratic candidates were scapegoating the Bush administration for the economic tsunami (even though the Democrats controlled the Senate for 4 (and the House for 2) of the 8 Bush years).

The Democrats were clearly looking to tie McCain to Bush and his policies, and McCain during the GOP primaries provided ammunition by linking his voting record to Bush's 2007 initiatives. (After all, Bush still was very popular with the party base.)

There are a number of things I would have done in response. McCain did point out some differences with Bush (in particular, manpower levels in Iraq). But I would have gone beyond that; I would have stressed Bush's limited federal experience (like Obama's), I would have criticized Bush's lack of proactive management style, his isolation from Congress, the growth of government operations and the federal deficit during his Presidency,  his limited use of the veto (particularly on spending), his appointments (especially the Texas and related cronyism of Harriet Miers, Alberto Gonzales, Michael "Heck of a job, Brownie" Brown, etc.), and his management style (particularly in terminating poor performers). I would have named key members of my Cabinet in advance and specific reform objectives. The idea was not to engage in Bush bashing "as usual", but to distinguish his own center-right administration as based on experience, a proven bipartisan approach in Washington, competence, and active engagement. The idea also would have been to link Bush's failures with his limited track record and note Obama's own inexperience. Focus on the fact that in the middle of an economic crisis the last thing we could afford was Obama's on-the-job training.

--Real Change is Focusing on Existing, Limited Distinctive Competencies, Emphasis on Citizen-Oriented Services, Administrative Excellence and Frugal Federal Spending. The government should live up to its commitments to existing citizen benefits and services and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of government, with streamlining and reorganizing government offices, flattening bureaucratic layers, simplifying business processes, shrinking critical paths (e.g., to drug approval), implementing rigorous quality, anti-fraud and service standards, reemphasizing operational services (e.g., more Border Patrol agents, auditors, food inspectors, etc.),  laying off surplus personnel, shutting down redundant facilities, and demanding that federal government workers share in some of the same sacrifices as workers in the private sector, e.g., early retirement packages, layoffs, temporary salary/benefit freezes or cuts, etc. Insist that any future expanded government programs leverage existing infrastructure and personnel, e.g., increases in food inspectors should be balanced by federal manpower attrition or cutbacks elsewhere (such as not filling retiring managers).  Democrats have sometimes emphasized the numbers of policemen on the beat and teachers in the classroom; conservatives focus more on right-sizing the level of qualified operational public service personnel, management control using program target quality metrics and baselines, shrinking the bureaucracy, and improving administrative flexibility (versus work rules).

At the citizen level, what needs to be emphasized is a principle of fairness: government agencies and workers are not "more equal" than private sector businesses and workers. If businesses are expected to live within their means, so must government. And if local and state governments must live within a budget, so must the federal government.

--Defining Authentic Change in Washington: Going Beyond Political Spin. I would have also pointed out what the Democrats were proposing was not real change, i.e., the way things were being run in Washington, the idea that government knew how to spend money better or more efficiently than citizens and the private sector. It was more of the same throwing money at problems. And what return had we gotten from enormous federal government social net spending? Do we have stable family structures, lower drugs and crime, higher graduation rates, robust business development and functional literacy in our urban centers? Instead, you hear the Democrats asking for more and more money, throwing good money after bad, and nothing ever fundamentally changes. All the Democrats have managed to do over the years is to aid and abet class-based paranoia, a dependency on government handouts and a feeling of entitlement. Bush, in fact, had added to the size of government, the national debt and entitlements (Medicare prescription drug coverage). If anything, the principal argument by the Democrats was that Bush didn't increase spending enough. McCain should have taken a stand of stop the madness; before we spend another dime on the backs of our grandchildren, we need to fundamentally change the way that Washington does business. Change goes beyond rhetoric or putting more money in leaky buckets.

I would have also been far more aggressive in pointing out Democratic game playing--that the same kind of phony savings arguments that were used to justify the new entitlements of the Great Society were being reintroduced to justify the government's footprint in the health sector. I would have raised doubts over Obama's smoke-and-mirrors approach to meeting and beating McCain's tax cuts to the middle class while vastly expanding government spending, paying lip service to the deficit, and saying he could pay it off by simply restoring the "magical" Clinton higher tax-bracket rates (roughly 5 percentage points higher), while at the same time knowing tax hikes effectively lower the net benefit of labor, implying a shortfall in expected tax revenue.

I would have explicitly put out there the fact that the Democrats were simply engaging in budgetary loss-leader gimmicks by artificially underestimating a program's costs to get citizens on board, much like a drug dealer tries to build his customer base by getting newbies hooked with "free" narcotics. Once the program is in place, the Democrats will then argue that the program's ineffectiveness is not intrinsic but an artifact of "insufficient funding". They have been playing the same song and dance for decades.

--Use Symbolic Scenarios to Underscore Conservative Themes. I would have used symbolic ads to make the point over Democratic tax-and-spend policies. For example:

• A Democrat puts his government program proposals in a shopping cart and paying for it using the China "Red Card" (noting that citizens will be paying off interest in the future, crowding out other government expenditures, and perhaps hearing a Chinese Red Card collection agency calling on a taxpayer's home phone, arguing they needed to make a payment now). 
• Parents or grandparents plead with a 5-year-old to co-sign their government loan paperwork. 
• A child notes that the private sector has built the best planes in the world, designed the best technological devices, and provides the best health care. What does the government do best?
• A Democrat is frustrated by his young children constantly asking questions like "How much is a trillion dollars?" and "When are you going to pay it back?"
• A young child tries to open a lemonade stand and has to deal with zonings restrictions, inspectors, high cost of ingredients, and paperwork, and then Obama stops by to take away half of his earnings and gives it to the other kids (whom are playing)
• A man goes to the gas station to fill up his tank, with the gas pump only accepting Saudi Arabia, Iran or Russia cards for payment and his young child asks why he couldn't pay with an American card.
• Obama, Reid, and Pelosi lookalikes are given the keys to US Treasury printing presses and immediately offer free samples only to those households not paying any federal income taxes... 
• An Obama lookalike in a magician's cape with smoke and mirrors pulls government programs out of his top hat. 
• You are the last private-sector homeowner in the neighborhood,  your new neighbor yet another government bureaucrat.

--Point out the Democratic Track Record and the Risk to Checks and Balances Between Branches of Government. Democratic claims of fiscal discipline are disingenuous, that a Democratic Congress has never balanced a fiscal budget in the last 40 years, and US voters, by putting the Democrats in charge of both the Executive and Legislative branches of government would be like the fox guarding the henhouse, that the Democrats would use the pretext of an economic crisis to essentially load up on nearly 30 years of pent-up spending initiatives held in check by a Republican President or House of Representatives. The one sure consequence of electing a Democratic legislature and President are massive deficits, with only a small proportion of wage earners (in particular, job creators) expected to share in the massive costs of government build out.

-- Recast Health Care Reform. I would have phrased the issues differently to voters; there were a number of false assumptions in the progressive camp, e.g., misleading statistical comparisons with countries having nationalized systems or implied financial status or unhealthiness of the uninsured. I would have also pointed out the government sector already is deeply involved with health care funding (almost half), implicitly subsidized by the private sector, i.e., government is not the solution: it is a big part of the problem, e.g., piling on trillions in unfunded mandates, inefficient pricing of services (resulting in underpayment for some necessary services and a perverse incentive of providers to maximize revenues by adding medically questionable, higher-margin reimbursable services). There have been false comparisons (between the private and public sector), since government payments typically do not cover market prices and administrative cost comparisons are misleading (e.g., the government doesn't cover certain private-sector costs, such as provider qualification, price negotiation, anti-fraud and promotional costs). Any additional market share of government in health care pushes the costs by adding incremental products and services for currently uninsured (i.e., self-insured). The idea from Obama and others that business health care options are not going to be affected by private sector insurers having to pass along implicit subsidies for a subsequently larger aggregate government reimbursement gap is patently absurd.

I would have underscored fairness issues, e.g., people who pay for health care or health care insurance get no tax break, but gold-plated health plans by managers and union workers were tax-exempt. I would have also pointed out that smaller businesses, unlike large businesses which can self-insure, are subject to high-cost state-specific mandates.

Finally, I would have pushed freedom issues. Historically, American people have not depended on the government for basic expenses (food, housing, clothing, etc.) Progressive paternalism logically knows no bounds. We have a slippery slope problem here. Americans need to engage in their own risk assessment; there is a vibrant insurance industry. You can certainly argue with household heads, as a matter of prudence, should carry life insurance, long-term care insurance, etc. Progressives, by promising to bail out financially imprudent behavior of individuals (e.g., no rainy day savings or sharing risk with others), introduce the same kind of moral hazard they condemn on an institution level by expanding government guarantees on deposits or "too-big-to-fail"  (e.g., insurers, banks or savings and loans) : if the government is going to bail me out because I don't buy insurance, what's the point of buying insurance? And if I choose to pay for basic medical expenses out-of-pocket, why should liberals care?   If I'm a good health risk, why should I be forced to subsidize the irresponsible behavior of others (e.g., heavy smokers or poor diet and exercise)? Why should I have to pay for an administrative middleman (private or public sector) or compelled to subsidize in vitro fertilization for another couple or Viagra pills to enhance an older male's sex life?

I would have also warned voters to read the fine print, especially when the Democrats conveniently "discover" cost savings in Medicare/Medicaid just in time to expand the government footprint (after 4 decades of not finding any or investing in state-of-the-art anti-fraud measures) I would have made the Democrats eat each and every failure of failed or failing related state programs (e.g., Hawaii, Oregon, Tennessee, Maine, and Massachusetts). I would have pointed out how the costs of these programs have routinely exploded beyond budget and have resulted in rationing type decisions (e.g., excluding certain medicines or treatments and limiting eligibility).