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The Senate tackles the healthcare bill that may be its most important domestic legislation in a generation, we might have expected thousands of citizens to descend on Capitol Hill to demonstrate, for or against.

The important parts of this debate have moved into the Senate's backrooms.The great healthcare debate hasn't been a triumph of mass politics on either side. Congress isn't being stampeded by the public into passing a bill  and it's not being stopped by the public from passing one. One reason for this resurgence of backroom politics is simple, Polls show the public to be fairly evenly divided on healthcare reform and understandably confused by its details. But there's also a deeper reason. In modern American politics, with its professional lobbyists and millions of dollars in campaign advertising, public opinion isn't always the most important thing.Groups on both sides, from the U.S.

Chamber of Commerce to the unions, have already announced millions of dollars in planned advertising spending to do just that. When he ran for president last year, Barack Obama said he'd try to change that system, in part by keeping his gigantic grass-roots network of campaign supporters together as a new, populist force in the legislative battles to come. It did make sure that reform supporters turned out for town hall meetings over the summer, and it's running some ads attacking Republican House members in districts that Obama won.

But doing much beyond that has proved difficult, primarily because the most important debate over healthcare is not between the two parties  Republicans decided early that their goal was simply to stop a bill  but among Democrats. And OFA, now a wholly owned subsidiary of the Democratic National Committee, has carefully refrained from criticizing any Democratic incumbents. Obama's choice of strategies may well turn out to have been good politics, especially on an issue as complex as healthcare. Well-funded, well-focused interest groups often wield power more effectively than the general public, even though the public has more at stake. If the president wins a healthcare bill, it will be a major victory.

Source: Los Angeles Times

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