Democrats' push for health care reform is currently playing out too much, for Democratic taste that is, like a rerun of 1993 and 1994.

Polling by Gallup in June and July 1994 found that between 60 and 69 percent of Americans, respectively, thought, “Congress should pass a bill to reform the health care system.”

Yet in polling over the same summer months, only 40 to 43 percent, respectively, favored “President Clinton's plan to reform health care.”

Today, like 1994, there is roughly a 25-point drop off between support for generic reform and the public's sense of President Obama's reform.

The most recent CNN poll finds that 77 percent of Americans today support “major structural changes in the nation's health care system” but only 50 percent say that they favor “Obama's plan to reform health care.” This opinion gap is an outgrowth of the health care reform paradox.

It's worth noting, looking back, that Clinton's loss of public support was not a slow bleed.

In 12 Gallup polls between September 1993 and July 1994 the portion of Americans who favored Clinton's plan shifted from 59 to 40 percent. The peak and valley of that polling were the first and last month. But in January 1994, Clinton's plan had regained the support of 57 percent of Americans.

Between the winter and summer of 1994 the well-funded critics became louder, few more than the insurance industry, and Republican opposition more unanimous.

By June 1994, in a private meeting at the White House, Sens. Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Bob Packwood told Clinton reform did not have the votes and the GOP was willing to take their opposition to the polls.

The failure of health care reform in 1994 was not a major factor in Republicans barnstorm of Congress that year. But it was a massive blow to the power of Clinton's legislative bully pulpit, stunting his agenda.

Democrats cannot afford for this episode of health care reform to end the same way (and I still don't believe it will). But the similarity between Americans' view of, or what they understand as, Obama's plan and their view of Clinton's in 1994, when it failed, is unmistakable.

"Harry and Louise" may now support what they were once against, but Obama has not accomplished the same with the public.

And it's worth recalling that in 1994, Democrats' lost the bill in part because they lost the public--which, for the time being, Democrats have today as well.

By October 1994, Americans said they were more “relieved” than “angry,” by a 53 to 38 percent margin, “about the fact that Congress did not pass a comprehensive health care reform bill this year.”