As the battle over health care unfolds, the attack ads, spin-doctoring and town hall rhetoric are being watched with special attention by a group that has no direct stake in the game - combatants in Washington's next big fight, the one over President Barack Obama's energy and climate plan.
Obama's climate plan calls for sweeping government efforts to develop new technology and strategies for using energy more efficiently. It would also create a complex "cap and trade" system for setting limits on carbon emissions and pressuring industry and others to reduce air pollution.
Many of the groups opposing or supporting these proposals are gleaning valuable lessons to be learned from the health care fight.
Groups on both sides of the energy and climate legislation "are not just watching health care closely, but calibrating how we go about doing this based on what we see happening out there," said Matt Bennett, vice president for public affairs at Third Way, a centrist Democratic think tank engaged in both the health care and climate fights.
Supporters of the climate bill are particularly intent on avoiding what some see as the Obama administration's biggest stumble in the health care debate: its failure to convince voters, particularly middle-class workers, that the legislation would tangibly improve their lives.
In both the health care and energy-climate debates, Bennett said, "the challenge is convincing people that they'll get some real return for reform. In energy, it's clear to us from focus groups that the only way to do that is to talk about economic growth."
Noting conservatives' success in packing town meetings with outspoken critics of Democrats' health care plans, environmentalists and business groups have begun trying to turn out energetic crowds of grass roots activists to dominate public forums devoted to the issue.
Supporters have begun to worry that Republican strategists will come up with a line of attack similar to the "death panels" charge, in which Democrats were accused - falsely - of proposing to create oversight bodies to deny care to terminal and other severely sick patients.
Obama's supporters are concerned in particular that the other side will charge that the "cap and trade" system could be abused to make millions for Wall Streeters.
Opponents are already pounding economics, too, charging that the bill would send gasoline and electricity prices soaring and kill U.S. jobs - allegations the bill's supporters say are largely untrue; in fact, they say, shifting to a more climate-friendly economy will create more jobs.
