Oba­macare goes live on Octo­ber 1, when new­ly-cre­at­ed gov­ern­ment exchanges are to begin sell­ing health insur­ance and enrolling peo­ple in Med­ic­aid. The date car­ries an eerie sig­nif­i­cance. Octo­ber 1 also is the fifth anniver­sary of the Sen­ate vote that made Oba­macare pos­si­ble: a 74–25 vote to cre­ate the Trou­bled Asset Relief Pro­gram, the $700 bil­lion Wall Street bailout bill, more com­mon­ly known as TARP.

Wall Street bailouts and the new health care law might seem worlds apart, but the mas­sive and cost­ly changes to the health care sys­tem were pos­si­ble only because Democ­rats con­trolled 60 Sen­ate seats, enabling them to pass the new law over sol­id GOP oppo­si­tion. Had they not vot­ed for TARP just weeks before the elec­tions, sev­er­al Repub­li­can Sen­ate can­di­dates who lost nar­row­ly might well have returned to the Sen­ate, hold­ing Democ­rats below the crit­i­cal 60-vote benchmark.

Some of the Sen­ate races were so close that they weren’t for­mal­ly decid­ed until weeks or months after the elec­tion. When the late Arlen Specter switched par­ties the fol­low­ing April 29, he became the 59th Demo­c­rat.  Democ­rats did not pick up their 60th seat until ear­ly July after a court declared that Al Franken (D‑MN) had nar­row­ly unseat­ed Norm Coleman.

No soon­er had Franken been sworn in than Chuck Schumer (D‑NY) pro­claimed that there was no need for Democ­rats to com­pro­mise on health care legislation.

Coleman’s was the tight­est con­test and his vote in favor of TARP may well have been the deci­sive fac­tor in his defeat. He had led Franken by 215 votes in the ini­tial count, but was sub­se­quent­ly declared the los­er. Thou­sands of vot­ers backed can­di­dates run­ning to Coleman’s right, many no doubt enraged that Repub­li­cans had helped enact a Wall Street bailout bill that they detested.

Ted Stevens also was in a close race. Despite being dam­aged by a con­vic­tion for under­stat­ing the val­ue of ren­o­va­tions on his Alas­ka home – a con­vic­tion that lat­er was over­turned at the request of Jus­tice Depart­ment pros­e­cu­tors – it took vote coun­ters weeks to con­firm that he’d lost. The bogus felony con­vic­tion undoubt­ed­ly loomed larg­er in the out­come, but the mar­gins were nonethe­less razor-thin. A pha­lanx of can­di­dates to Stevens’ right togeth­er polled over 17,000 votes, sev­er­al times his mar­gin of defeat. Many of these vot­ers were no doubt moti­vat­ed by their dis­gust with TARP.

Then there were can­di­dates who were unseat­ed by some­what larg­er mar­gins. Oregon’s Gor­don Smith had led his oppo­nent, Jeff Merkley (D‑OR), in most polls until the mid-Sep­tem­ber Wall Street melt­down, when he fell behind by a few per­cent­age points. His vote in favor of TARP like­ly sank what­ev­er hopes he had of regain­ing momen­tum. A can­di­date run­ning to his right won more than 92,000 votes, near­ly twice Smith’s mar­gin of defeat.

John Sununu of New Hamp­shire, anoth­er TARP backer, lost his seat to Jeanne Sha­heen (D‑NH). Sha­heen would like­ly have best­ed Sununu in any case, although a Suf­folk Uni­ver­si­ty poll tak­en in late Sep­tem­ber showed the race dead­locked and a Ras­mussen poll con­duct­ed dur­ing the same peri­od showed him lead­ing by 7 points.

His vote in favor of TARP a week lat­er could not have helped his ill-fat­ed bid. TARP still cast a shad­ow months after the elec­tion. The new­ly-elect­ed Sha­heen proud­ly boast­ed on her web­site that she’d vot­ed against TARP, although she wasn’t a Mem­ber of Con­gress when the fate­ful votes were tak­en. (She prob­a­bly was refer­ring to her vote in 2009 against releas­ing addi­tion­al TARP funds.) Whether or not his TARP vote cost Sununu his Sen­ate job, it won him anoth­er. He was appoint­ed to the board to over­see TARP spend­ing in Decem­ber 2008.

Then there were the GOP chal­lengers who suf­fered at the polls after defend­ing TARP. Bob Schaf­fer was run­ning for Colorado’s open seat against Mark Udall (D‑CO). Ras­mussen showed Schaf­fer lag­ging Udall by just two points in late Sep­tem­ber until he curi­ous­ly called TARP “nec­es­sary,” but “essen­tial­ly a tax.” It’s hard to imag­ine a state­ment that would have alien­at­ed Repub­li­can vot­ers more. And alien­ate them he did, help­ing doom his Sen­ate bid.

It’s also worth look­ing at GOP incum­bents who vot­ed against TARP. Roger Wick­er (R‑MI) was con­sid­ered a top tar­get of nation­al Democ­rats. Wick­er had been appoint­ed by Mississippi’s Gov­er­nor to the Sen­ate to tem­porar­i­ly fill in for Trent Lott, who had resigned his seat. In Novem­ber 2008, Wick­er was run­ning statewide for the first time, seek­ing vot­er approval to serve out the remain­der of Lott’s term. Polls showed a close race. Ras­mussen had Wick­er lead­ing by just 2 points on Sep­tem­ber 30. The fol­low­ing day, Wick­er vot­ed against TARP.  He won his race by a com­fort­able margin.

And though 11 of 13 Demo­c­ra­t­ic incum­bents who stood for elec­tion in 2008 vot­ed in favor of TARP, the most vul­ner­a­ble Demo­c­rat, Mary Lan­drieu (D‑LA), did not. Lan­drieu, who always faces stiff elec­toral chal­lenges, was in a com­pet­i­tive race against Repub­li­can John Kennedy. And while Kennedy nev­er did get with­in strik­ing dis­tance, Lan­drieu’s oppo­si­tion to TARP denied him a poten­tial opportunity.

It would be inter­est­ing to know whether Lan­drieu, before vot­ing against TARP, had a con­ver­sa­tion with the man who was head­ing up her party’s nation­al effort to win Sen­ate races: Chuck Schumer. “The Sen­a­tor from Wall Street” was unsur­pris­ing­ly among TARP’s most vocal cheer­lead­ers. But once the votes had been tak­en and TARP was enact­ed, Schumer’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­to­r­i­al Cam­paign Com­mit­tee ran ads attack­ing Repub­li­can incum­bents for vot­ing in favor of TARP.

If a shrewd polit­i­cal oper­a­tive like Schumer saw TARP votes as a polit­i­cal lia­bil­i­ty for Repub­li­cans, it almost cer­tain­ly was a fac­tor in those close races. I can’t prove that, of course. Elec­tions are com­plex events that defy analy­sis, and it was a tox­ic envi­ron­ment for Repub­li­can Sen­ate can­di­dates even with­out TARP. But the tim­ing and mag­ni­tude of the finan­cial melt­down undoubt­ed­ly made it one of the biggest things on vot­ers’ minds in Novem­ber 2008. Opin­ion polls on the Wall Street bailout tak­en in the run-up to the elec­tion var­ied depend­ing on how the ques­tion was word­ed. When the sur­vey ques­tion men­tioned that TARP spent $700 bil­lion, most vot­ers expressed disapproval.

That dis­ap­proval ran deep­est among the GOP’s con­ser­v­a­tive base, which saw TARP as an act of crony cap­i­tal­ism that bailed out wealthy invest­ment hous­es while leav­ing ordi­nary Amer­i­cans to suf­fer the con­se­quences of Wall Street excess­es. Those vot­ers are espe­cial­ly crit­i­cal in close races. It is impos­si­ble to deter­mine how many of them may have vot­ed for third par­ty can­di­dates or just stayed home in Novem­ber 2008, but it wouldn’t have tak­en many to turn even two or three of the tight­est Sen­ate elections.

And that — along with Specter’s par­ty switch — was enough to pro­vide Democ­rats with the 60 Sen­ate seats they need­ed to enact Oba­macare. Had they cap­tured few­er seats, they would have had to nego­ti­ate the specifics of a bill with their GOP col­leagues. A com­pro­mise may or may not have been pos­si­ble dur­ing 2009 but, as Schumer not­ed, com­pro­mise became unnec­es­sary once his par­ty con­trolled 60 seats. The process for gain­ing the sup­port of every Sen­ate Demo­c­rat was crude and polit­i­cal­ly ham-hand­ed, with votes pro­cured through spe­cial pro­vi­sions for Louisiana’s Mary Lan­drieu (the “Loiuisana Pur­chase”) and Florida’s Bill Nel­son (“Gator Aid”). The 60th vote came from for­mer Nebras­ka Sen­a­tor Ben Nel­son, whose “Corn­husker Kick­back” tanked his polit­i­cal career.

Sen­ti­ment ran so deeply against the law and the par­ti­san process that pro­duced it that Mass­a­chu­setts vot­ers did the unthink­able in Jan­u­ary 2010, award­ing the late Ted Kennedy’s seat to a Repub­li­can, Scott Brown.  When Brown took the oath of office in Feb­ru­ary, he closed a 7‑month win­dow dur­ing which Democ­rats con­trolled 60 Sen­ate seats.

With just 59 Sen­a­tors and hav­ing irre­triev­ably alien­at­ed their GOP col­leagues, House Democ­rats were forced to approve the Sen­ate bill with­out changes, for­feit­ing any chance to repair it in a House-Sen­ate con­fer­ence. Stuck with mak­ing a poor­ly-draft­ed, “as is” law work­able, the Admin­is­tra­tion sub­se­quent­ly approved var­i­ous waivers, exemp­tions and delays, some­times ignor­ing or con­tra­dict­ing the law’s clear stip­u­la­tions. The spe­cial deals it made for Mem­bers of Con­gress, big cor­po­ra­tions, labor unions, insur­ance com­pa­nies, and oth­ers with influ­en­tial lob­bies con­tributed to pop­u­lar dis­taste for the product.

Oba­macare will go for­ward despite that pop­u­lar dis­taste. Over time, peo­ple may come to accept it even if they nev­er ful­ly embrace it – just as they did with TARP, the law that made Oba­macare possible.