Hahahaha. The Democrats lost but the Democrats must not be held responsible for the loss??? The Democrats lost but they didn’t deserve to lose so let’s act like the loss was actually a win and ignore the lack of voter support???
If you don’t know how they got in, may I suggest that you start getting your “news” and information from sources other than the ones you’ve been using. just sayin’
Are you saying that the voters are too stupid to vote for Democrats? Maybe it’s that type of attitude from the Democrat supporters which caused many potential voters to stay home instead of voting for the candidates of the party that Gruber-ized the voters. You know, the party that counted on stupid voters supporting ACA/Obamacare.
Not stupid, just not sufficiently thoughtful from my perspective. I consider that wrong, just as you probably consider my motivations in voting to be equally wrong. In using the word “wrong” I mean more in the sense of a “bad idea”, rather than of any absolute moral or ethical standards, although it’s certainly true that politicians of all stripes have been known to attack their opponents on moral grounds.
I consider the GWB administration to be an abject failure in every sense of the word; as in, a complete & total catastrophe that mirrors some of the worst episodes in all of human history. But still, Bush won the election twice, though obviously the argument could be made that SCOTUS stole the election from Gore in 2000. Ultimately, as has already been said, winning in American politics doesn’t automatically equal “success,” no matter how you slice it.
But beyond that, you didn’t see Democrats rushing into office in '09 immediately chomping at the bit to undo all of Bush’s legacy accomplishments. Where was the movement to undo No Child Left Behind? Where was the push to take away Medicare Part D? Where was the drive to undo the Bush tax cuts? Hell, we’ve reintegrated ourselves into Iraq, and all of Bush’s legacy accomplishments are still with us.
There’s no comparable acceptance on the GOP side of things, at least right now. The GOP push to undo the ACA would - if somehow accomplished - effectively remove Obama’s name from the history books. I know that the idea of salting the earth of Obama’s presidency makes Pubbies downright weak in the knees, but again, I have to ask: why?
I mean, you always like to bring up how the ACA can still be undone somehow, to which I must reply: where would be the impetus? Seriously, nowhere before in history has a country moved to a UHC system only to subsequently get rid of it; does American Exceptionalism really mean that the US would be the 1st country on Earth to destroy its newly established UHC system? If so, that would be an astronomically tragic & stupid decision.
Note: I expect a huge amount of ACA demagoguery to die down after Obama is out of office - it’s called Obamacare for a reason, after all - but the law itself isn’t ever going away.
No. I’ll say it for the third time in this thread: the Democrats had no way to avoid being defeated. They could have scratched out the “D” next to their name on every ballot and replaced it with an “R” and they still would have lost in a landslide. Voters knew who voted for Obamacare and those representatives were doomed ever since.
Well first, is ACA a UHC system? I hear that it is a lot, but I also hear that it is not. The CBO seems to say clearly that it is not, since even under best case scenarios it will leave some uninsured.
If it is not, but is merely a health care expansion like SCHIP, then politically it’s not going to be that hard to repeal it or roll it back. Plus if Republicans don’t care about the political consequences of repealing it as Democrats didn’t care about the political consequences in passing it, they can probably just do it and keep it done. A backlash to repealing ACA might get Democrats back in power, but they wouldn’t have the political will to pass it again because red state Democrats would know beforehand that they’d be doomed if they did. So if Republicans are willing to just lose in 2018 and 2020, they can repeal ACA and keep it repealed.
Of course they probably won’t do that. They don’t need to. The system is a rickety three legged stool. Kick out one leg and the whole thing falls apart on its own. And the public is practically demanding Republicans to kick out one of the legs(the mandate). All the GOP has to do to effectively repeal ACA is give the public what it wants.
I only referred to it as UHC because that’s how you’ve referred to it ITT. A more accurate characterization of the ACA is that it provides universal access to health insurance for people who want it. Not quite UHC, no, but if given enough time & improvements, it could eventually get there after a few years.
But you see, it’s posts like this which remind me why I don’t regularly engage in debate with you. You flippant attitude & disregard for reality casts aside any halfhearted attempts you might be making at objectivity.
Whatever, have fun continuing to live in your bubble.
Actually, the phrase I’ve used is “close enough to UHC for Americans”. I’d also note that most political figures regard ACA as UHC, including the President.
If we have universal access to insurance for all who want it, why would we need to go any further?
And I will say it for the second time in this thread, all three Democrats running for federal office in my state voted for the ACA and all three won handily this election. Each got at least 60% of the vote. They all stood next to Obama at a rally on Halloween. So, apparently not all voters are as easily spooked by the ACA as you seem to think.
Because it would be cheaper, provide better outcomes, and drive the GOP into inchoate rage.
You’re in Rhode Island, right? In a solidly blue state, Obama and ACA wouldn’t be a hindrance the way it would be in, say, Oklahoma.
I think that any Democrat 2016 presidential candidate would be best served distancing themselves from Obama. McCain made a lot of mistakes in his presidential run but what stuck to him was the characterization that electing him would be like electing GWB to a third term. Candidates should be gearing themselves as “Not Another Obama”
That strategy didn’t work for Al Gore. I think a lot of people think that their experience is the same for people everywhere. It isn’t. Obama is very popular among a large segment of the population, as evidenced by his reelection in 2012, despite many, many people being absolutely sure he would lose badly. Those people (who like Obama) just didn’t show up to vote in the mid-terms. They will in 2016.
Nevertheless, Hillary Clinton will never be considered an Obama clone.
Absolutely granted, but could it have worked in Colorado where just two years ago Barack Obama himself won an election? I am willing to wager that ACA came up in Colorado during that race, but somehow Obama managed to win.
I am just objecting to Stringbean’s claim that. “Voters knew who voted for Obamacare and those representatives were doomed ever since.” I think that is over valuing that single issue as the deciding factor in an election. Something that this article from the Denver Post in October backs up.
http://www.denverpost.com/politics/ci_26691007/udall-and-gardner-battle-over-obamacare-even-issue
The idea that association with Obama is considered the same as association with Bush is insane to me.
Association with an unpopular president.
Who would ever confuse John McCain with GWB? Clinton actually worked for Obama and doesn’t disagree with Obama on any major issues. The only difference between them is the perception of competence and hawkishness, even though it’s unlikely that a Clinton Presidency would be any more likely to go to war than Obama’s has been.
The Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, has left a gaping hole in the public safety net for folks below $23,500 in income in States that formed no exchange that opted out of the new Medicare. There is no insurance subsidy for individuals or families with less than $23,500 in income.
All the big subsidies go to folks with $23,500 to over $90,000 in income. The problem for Democrats is that there are millions of people in States that opted for the Federal exchange and opted out of Medicare. The Democrats claimed that Obamacare was a solution to provide poor Americans with healthcare, it is not - it is a fallacy.
Their voter base of the working poor will likely show up at the polls in 2014 and mad as hell because they got shut out of healthcare coverage.
And so they’ll show their impeccable logic by voting en masse for the party that prevented their state from forming an exchange?
The exchange doesn’t matter to them. They are on Medicaid.
Anyway, it looks like Democrats are standing up against Obama, at least the left.