The republican congress has far worse approval numbers than Obama. I guess they’re done. A lot of them don’t even act congressional.
Know what else? Sometimes Fox “News” buries stories that are unfavorable to republicans. They get called on it and shit.
Unemployment has dropped four points and yet congress hasn’t gotten any credit. Why do think that is? It’s proof that they don’t act congressional and Americans don’t trust them.
Wait, wait, don’t go. Don’t you want to hear some more complete stupidity I pull out my ass?
The Congressional Republicans are up for reelection and can be reaffirmed by the public. Most of them are not lame ducks. When Obama is gone, they’ll still be there.
Okay, so ACA is significant because it pissed off Republicans? Was that your goal when you voted for Obama?
Well it worked. Too bad he won’t leave a lasting legacy other than ACA(and possibly might not even leave that behind if the GOP wins the Presidency in 2016).
Ah yes, the “we’ll repeal the law somehow and replace it with something we can’t explain!” lie. That worked great in 2012 and I bet it’ll be gangbusters in 2016.
Or, they can just repeal it to demonstrate how useless his Presidency was. That alone should be instructive to Democrats next time they get ideas about ramming through major legislation when they know they have a tiny window.
All but the stupidest Republicans realize they can’t strip 10 million people of their health insurance. You can see this if you look at their rhetoric.
All the democrats have to do is wait. In a generation, getting a single-payer system installed will be a breeze. The republican party, as currently constituted, is the last whimper of a dying demographic clinging to a dead ideology.
Afraid it’s not that easy. There’s this little thing called brains that voters have. Believe it or not, they are not informed by their identity. Americans kinda like America, it’s why they live here and not Sweden. And even Sweden doesn’t have single payer.
Runner Pat, the Patriot Act was a bipartisan act. It certainly qualifies as a rushed through piece of legislation, but if you want a better comparison to ACA, you’ll prefer Medicare Part D. And even that’s not the same, because Republicans have never functioned under the theory that their window was limited. Republicans figure if they won the last election they can win the next one. Democrats seem to always assume that when they take control of both elected branches that they’ll lose it. Which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
See, here’s what I’ve wondered about this point: won’t their base cheer that those 10 million useless lazy welfare queens aren’t vacuuming money out of the pockets of honest hardworking Americans anymore? And haven’t the Republican Congress proven time and time again that they really only need their base to win, especially with gerrymandered districts?
No, Marley’s right. ALthough the number isn’t as high as he thinks. First, there’s those who had insurance previously and lost it due to ACA. They will not complain about going back to their old policies. Second, there’ the small matter of fraud. There’s still no system in place to verify that people are eligible for the subsidies they are claiming. Once such a system is in place(probably after Obama), that will reduce the numbers of people in the exchanges. Maybe a little, maybe a lot.
Then there’s the fact that the individual mandate could be the key to the whole thing. the President hasn’t had the courage to fully implement it yet. Republicans, if they win, should not develop such courage in his place. Use prosecutorial discretion to not enforce the mandate, and if that kills ACA, it kills ACA.
Yes. And if Republicans tell voters “If you vote for us, we’ll take away a benefit you like just to stick it to Obama,” voters will learn a lesson from that.
They lost in 2008 and 2012, but who’s counting?
They would like to win the White House at some point.
I’m not sure enough people are truly affected who aren’t Democratic base voters already to make a difference.
Historically, that tends to happen no matter what eventually. Even when Republicans were truly a minority party they were able to win the White House frequently. If Obama leaves office with a 41% approval rating, that’s going to weigh heavily on Hillary Clinton. She did work for him after all. The Republican candidate isn’t going to be coming from Congress. Won’t be easy to hang Congress’ unpopularity on him. Outsider vs. insider. That rarely goes well for the insider.
The ACA debate is over. The Republicans don’t even bring it up any more except for throwing red meat to their base. The public pretty overwhelmingly opposes straight repeal.
As far as Obama’s polling, in the middle of terms it doesn’t mean much at all. And this goes for mid-term presidential polling for just about every president. Clinton’s approval rating was extremely high at this point in '98, and it only moved the mid-term election needle a tad towards his party.
History doesn’t care about polling, it cares about accomplishments. The ACA naysayers have already been proven wrong about nearly every prediction they’ve made – it hasn’t resulted in great cost increases, it hasn’t bankrupted America, and it has covered millions of the uninsured. And the number of folks who have inferior or more costly insurance due to the ACA is pretty small, and very exaggerated by opponents. Far more people have better insurance than worse insurance due to the ACA.
Polling gives the historians a pretty good indication of what the public thought of a President and most Presidents with low polling end up being poorly regarded by history. They ain’t all Truman. LBJ still fucked up Vietnam, Nixon is still corrupt, Carter is still regarded as feckless, GWB will always be a disaster, and Obama will always be regarded as incompetent. Unless he does something to massively turn his administration around, but face it, the guy barely seems interested anymore.