:dubious: Yeah, when’s it gonna get around to that, anyway?!
Or, as the Unitarian Jihad states, "We have heard from enough sincere people to last a lifetime already. Just because you believe it’s true doesn’t make it true. Just because your motives are pure doesn’t mean you are not doing harm. Get a dog, or comfort someone in a nursing home, or just feed the birds in the park. Play basketball. Lighten up. The world is not out to get you, except in the sense that the world is out to get everyone. "
I’m surprised these guys aren’t calling themselves ’ rebels’ yet. Last time a group of small government conservatives sacrificed the Republic for their ideology, they were singing Dixie as a national anthem.
Very revealing, actually, in their analysis of the Republican base:
“Moderates,” in their analysis, are approximately one-quarter of the base.
Do you have evidence which specific provisions of the law are unpopular? Because what I’ve seen is that one provision–mandated insurance–is somewhat unpopular, but everything else is very popular, and that many people who dislike the law think it’s not enough, and that not many people want the law to be repealed entirely.
Exactly. I suspect a great deal of the oppositions is from people listening to all the predictions of utter disaster. Ted Cruz and Fox News wouldn’t like now, would they? Thus the “OMG, a website is unavailable, what a disaster!” crap we’ve been hearing.
In a few months when all is running smoothly the forecasts of disaster will seem pretty silly. And at least some of the people paying more will realize that they are also getting more.
And if they run on repeal, they will find out the endowment effect has kicked in. This says that something you own has more value to you than the same thing which you do not own. It is going to be hard to convince people who now have insurance that this is bad. Just like Social Security. People who have it know the Ponzi game bullshit for what it is.
guns won’t be a bigger issue - its already fading pretty fast - and people long ago picked sides - which is one largish zealot side, a really big majority “don’t care TOO much” (which includes the "as long as I keep my shotgun for hunting) and a smaller zealot side on the anti.
Immigration won’t be a huge deal - again, those lines have been drawn. Ted Cruz is trying to stir the anti-immigration pot, but its unlikely to get much support - Hispanics are simply too big a voting block in the general election.
Health care - by the time the election comes around, the exchanges will be up and Obamacare will be a fact of life. You will move a few people with “I got screwed by higher premiums” - but frankly, most of us have seen such huge premium increases year after year that we have a hard time stomaching the claim by insurance companies that this one is the ACA (yeah, what’s been your excuse for the past TEN years). Some others will move because someone they know - or themselves - was able to get insurance when they previously couldn’t.
Maybe something else, but I don’t see those three moving too many people from their 2012 positions.
More likely the biggest impact will be a throw the bums all out wave given the huge disgust for Congress in general. Approval rating in the latest Gallup poll was down to 11% which is just one point above the worst score Gallup has ever recorded. That said what we need to know is how disgusted voters are in partcular districts: those few which might somehow be considered “swing”; and those in which the seat might be safely GOP but an incumbent Tea Partier might be primaried from the center Right. I’d settle for less crazy dysfunctional.
The polls of the op is nothing to get excited about but the list of districts they looked at do look like they actually could swing pretty easily with a just a bit of throw the bums out mindset. Enough to flip it? Seems like a long shot.
This 538 from nearly a year ago was on target.
What might, then?
How does that work, though? Most voters, I think, even if disgusted by their own Representative, would still rather vote for him/her than switch parties, and a lot of districts are safe seats for one party or the other. If a real challenge does not happen in the primary stage, then it’s not going to happen.
We are talking about the districts that are either swing or only somewhat lean. There are fewer of them than there used to be to be sure but they still exist.
Some of those districts even lean D but have an R in the House as a result of the same disgust last time. Look up some those in that link I provided above in the Partisan Voting Index (PVI), by how they went in the last Presidential election, by polled party ID … these are the districts that are not safe. They have a sizable number of people who are willing to shift one way or the other. For kicks I’ll sart on the last in the list. WI 7 PVI even, in '08 went for Obama by 8, in '12 Romney by 3. VA 2 PVI R +5, in '08 Obama by 2, in '12 Obama by 2. PA 8 PVI D +1, in '08 Obama by 8, in '12 Obama-Romney 49 and change each. You can keep looking on your own if you want but the flavor is clear. There are plenty of people ready to give a different bum a chance each cycle in enough districts to matter.
If Avik Roy, a National Review contributor, is right, then premiums will rise 99% for men. If that’s true, then there’s no way to write that off as just your typical increase in premiums. Even if he’s off by half, it’s a huge increase.
Given all the ways to measure premiums, it’ll be hard to determine exactly how much they went up nationally, but individual voters who see big increases will be very, very unhappy.
But, such never are, are they?
Not always right, but not always wrong either. The fact that the administration and its supporters have chosen to use the “lower than expected” metric for measuring insurance prices on the exchanges speaks volumes. Problem is, voters aren’t going to judge their premiums by what the CBO predicted. They are going to compare them to what they paid before. As was pointed out, a typical 10% increase or whatever can be written off as what’s been going on for 10 years. Anywhere from 20%-90% would be tough to pass off as not due to ACA.
Tweet of the Day at DailyKos
They have votes. If only they’d use them when Barack Obama isn’t on top of the ticket. If they don’t, then they can’t blame big moneyed interests.
No, they’re going to judge their happiness on the fact that they can actually buy insurance now.
Sure, if it’s affordable where before it was not. Otherwise all you’ve done to these people is make them buy what they found unaffordable to begin with.
Do you really believe the things you write? This one is so disconnected from any real comprehension that I have to wonder.
The whole point was to fundamentally change the structure of healthcare coverage in order to reduce costs and increase affordable access to people - to insure the uninsured. It would indeed be stupid if the idea was just to make peolple buy insurance they couldn’t afford.
And it is working. Premiums are coming down, especially in states that aren’t actively working to fuck things up for Obamacare. And people are getting affordable care and are happy with it. It is the nightmare scenario that the right is trying so desperately hard to forestall.
Is there an argument in here somewhere?
That’s what adding mandate upon mandate does to the price of insurance. You make them provide more services, it raises the cost.
This statement lacks evidence. Premiums are not coming down anywhere, they are rising “less than expected”. As for people getting affordable care, who? Things don’t go into effect until January.
I’ll be charitable and call this a future prediction. I’m not interested in litigating whether or not it will come true or not, just pointing out that if insurance costs more for people, they will be angry.