Imagine how the Democrats would be doing if they had a candidate they liked.
Republicans are hamstrung too. They like their guy, but no one else does.
Tell ya what though, McCauliffe knows how to run a campaign if nothing else. Very professional, despite the weaknesses of the candidate.
This is one of the main problems of the party. The Democrats often put up a candidate that no one particularly likes, but they almost never put up a totally unacceptable candidate. McAuliffe is the distilled essence of politics, and not in a good way, but very few are terrified by the idea of him as governor. The Republicans have been putting unacceptable candidates in winnable state-wide races since 2010, and not just a few.
Alvin Greene being a notable exception.
Man - what was up with that guy?
I don’t think Cuccinelli is unacceptable. He did win statewide four years ago, after all. But he is definitely too conservative for purple Virginia.
But yeah, otherwise you’re right, the Democrats rarely nominate unelectable candidates. Republicans do, frequently.
The caveat should be that the Democrats don’t nominate unacceptable candidates in COMPETITIVE races. No one in that primary was capable of beating Demint.
Even if they take the whole economy down with them?
George Bush was the MBA President. What happened?
I doubt Sarvis would make a difference now. The result wouldn’t change if Sarvis dropped out of the race. It might have made a difference before the shutdown but not anymore.
No kidding.
I don’t know if I’d make a special effort to vote if Cuccinelli wasn’t the Republican candidate.
I know that it has been a while since I personally revisited this thread, but I just wanted to get your guys’ feedback on the recent ACA ‘fix.’ What do you guys think about it?
Personally, I don’t endorse Obama’s proposal at all, although I recognize that it was born out of a wave of political expediency. The one thing it does, which is kind of ingenious I think, is move some of the negative publicity about the law away from the administration and force it onto the insurance companies.
My thought too, the President can’t make it happen but the insurance companies will look bad. Here in Washington, the state insurance commissioner has nixed it.
These plans were going to sunset Jan. 1, right? There’s no way most insurance companies can reverse course in such a short period of time. I know my company offers a plan that is going away due to the ACA, and we’ve been working on its phase-out for months. Even if we got word today that we could continue to offer it, that ship has sailed.
Besides, people who are losing their inadequate coverage are being forced to buy more expensive plans - what motivation does the insurance company have to keep operating the low cost one? The only thing that would make a difference is if the amendment forced insurance companies to allow people to stay on the old plans. I have a hard time seeing that passing and if it did, it would be a nightmare for the insurers to implement this late in the game.
I can’t wait for a GOP president to nix Obamacare by presidential fiat.
For that to happen, the GOP would actually have to win a presidential election… I don’t think that’s too likely anytime soon.
If an election were held today, it would be much more likely than it was in 2012.
I do not think that a Republican running with a platform that did cost the American people more than 20 billion dollars in the shutdown in a sorry attempt at defunding the ACA would be an argument that would had fly for most Americans.
You still think that the card the Republicans have now, of problems that did cost hundreds of millions on a website and caused in part by the biggest critics not doing anything for the new law would be a winning one compared to the ace the Republicans gave to Obama.
Not likely that Romney would had succeeded when the election ads just needed to remind the people of the waste of the shutdown/defunding Republican move.
The ACA is far more damaging than the shutdown. $20 billion is theoretical. A 50% increase in your premiums is very, very real.
Wrong, very very wrong, not theoretical at all:
And yet we had a really good month as far as job growth went. Whereas the jobs lost by ACA, or people being cut to 25 hours, those are very real and create very motivated voters.
The problems get real bad once they get the site fixed.
Yeah, 24 billions is nothing, so we should not complain about half a billion for the troubled start of the ACA. :rolleyes:
Read your point again, it is one of the most silly statements made, having a good month means that it would had been even better if all that revenue was not lost.
And for all your pontifications, you are ignoring that the current system remains unsustainable and a huge part of the expense was already there before the ACA appeared, the dick moves of the insurance companies are still in the end an attempt of the insurance companies to offer the same old useless insurance for cheap and also ignoring that the current system also leads to a lot of jobs never existing because of the costs. And now many corporations are fooling many telling us that it is the government the one that is responsible.
Yeah, it’s all a big misunderstanding, other than the fact that without ACA, 3 million people would never have received cancellation notices. THe law upended half the individual market overnight. Wait till the public sees what it does to the employer insurance market.
If the REpublicans shot themselves in the foot, the Democrats shot themselves right between the eyes.
Without ACA, millions of sick people could not get health care at all. Until the republicans come up with an alternative, they will continue to lose voters. Most people are smart enough to see past all this bluster of an admittedly terrible roll out.
So between that and the stance that the right has taken regarding social issues, I’m not convinced that this is a shot between the eyes to the Democratic party.