Author Topic: Democrats will pay political price for Obamacare in 2014 By BYRON YORK  (Read 1028 times)

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http://washingtonexaminer.com/democrats-will-pay-political-price-for-obamacare-in-2014/article/2541228

Democrats will pay political price for Obamacare in 2014
By BYRON YORK | DECEMBER 26, 2013 AT 4:08 PM

As Democrats survey a troubled 2014 political landscape, it's easy to forget how optimistic they seemed less than a year ago.

"I would expect that Nancy Pelosi is going to be speaker again pretty soon," President Obama told cheering House Democrats at a party retreat last February.

In the rosy scenario that took hold in some Democratic circles, the party was positioned to recapture the House in 2014 and maintain control of the Senate, allowing Obama to defy the history of second-term presidential decline. Great successes and good years lay ahead.

Had Democrats forgotten Obamacare, the law they passed in 2010 that was scheduled to take effect in 2014? It almost seemed as if they had.

Obama and his allies put off the arrival of Obamacare until after the president faced re-election in 2012. His administration also delayed releasing key rules regarding the law until after the election for fear of angering voters. But now they can't put it off any longer. 2014 will be the year Democrats pay for Obamacare.


When Obama spoke to the House retreat, polls consistently showed Democrats leading in the so-called "generic ballot" question, that is, whether voters will choose a Democratic or a Republican representative in the next election. Now, however, there's been a big swing away from Democrats and toward Republicans.

In addition, a new CNN poll found that 55 percent of voters surveyed said that when it comes to congressional races, they're more likely to vote for a candidate who opposes Obama than one who supports the president. "Those kind of numbers spelled early trouble for the Democrats before the 1994 and 2010 midterms, and for the GOP before the 2006 elections," CNN polling director Keating Holland reported on the network's website.

Meanwhile, support for Obamacare, already low, could fall further as more middle-income Americans — voters — figure out that they are the ones who will be paying for the Democrats' national health care scheme.

In 2009 and 2010, Obama, Pelosi and their fellow Democrats sold Obamacare as a kind of miracle. It would give health insurance to 30 million previously uncovered people and cut the federal deficit by more than a trillion dollars at the same time. And the only taxes needed to pay for it all would fall on the very wealthy. It seemed impossible, but that's what they claimed.

Now, millions of middle-income Americans who probably felt safe from Obamacare's taxes are learning that they will pay for the program after all, in the form of higher premiums. Democrats constructed a system in which insurance companies would be forced to cover more people and then spread the cost around among those who had coverage all along, meaning many middle-income Americans will have to pay more for what they already had. Taxpayer-paid subsidies would go to lower-income Americans.

"The Affordable Care Act was not designed to reduce costs or, the law's name notwithstanding, to make health insurance coverage affordable for the vast majority of Americans," health care consultant Kip Piper told USA Today. "The law uses taxpayer dollars to lower costs for the low-income uninsured but it also increases costs overall and shifts costs within the marketplace."

It was a clever strategy, allowing Democrats to sell their bill as a deficit cutter that wouldn't raise taxes on the vast majority of Americans. But the public had to find out eventually. "ACA taxes were imposed only on high-income people," the conservative writer David Frum noted recently in a series of tweets. "But large costs fall on the middle class, too, in the hidden, kludgy form of rate hikes. 'Obamacare is deficit neutral' wasn't technically a lie, but it was highly misleading. The middle class will pay and is paying."

Did most Americans understand that when Obamacare was passed and signed into law? Unlikely. But 2014 will be the year they find out.

And they are unlikely to be kind to the people who sold them that bill of goods. Democrats can comfort themselves by noting that the public disapproves of Republicans, too. But if Obamacare is a major political issue in November 2014 — and indications are that it will be — then Democrats will be the party that pays. And all their optimism of 2013 will seem like it was a long, long time ago.
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Re: Democrats will pay political price for Obamacare in 2014 By BYRON YORK
« Reply #1 on: December 27, 2013, 11:40:29 pm »
From your mouth to God's ear.

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Re: Democrats will pay political price for Obamacare in 2014 By BYRON YORK
« Reply #2 on: December 28, 2013, 12:34:10 am »
The only thing that can screw up a scenario that sweeps more Republicans into the House and into a takeover of the Senate is to hand the Democrats the usual set of issues that work against Republicans, especially inopportune remarks by candidates in forums in which they forget that their statements will end up on YouTube within the hour. 

As of now, the Democrats are trying to build their 2014 push to women voters on income inequality.   Unemployment insurance and raising the minimum wage are the two biggies.  They know tax increases are off the table, but they're getting huge revenue increases in Obamacare (and Republicans should point that out, over and over). 

But the Republicans have a huge issue looming in the need to bailout the insurance companies when sign-up numbers fail to materialize and insurance companies begin reporting big losses.  They should stake out a ground right now, to introduce legislation to stop any bailout of the insurance industry.  That will appeal across party lines and will receive support from lots of Democrats. 

Start that campaign NOW!!!
Roy Moore's "spiritual warfare" is driving past a junior high without stopping.

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Re: Democrats will pay political price for Obamacare in 2014 By BYRON YORK
« Reply #3 on: December 28, 2013, 12:37:58 am »
The only thing that can screw up a scenario that sweeps more Republicans into the House and into a takeover of the Senate is to hand the Democrats the usual set of issues that work against Republicans, especially inopportune remarks by candidates in forums in which they forget that their statements will end up on YouTube within the hour. 

As of now, the Democrats are trying to build their 2014 push to women voters on income inequality.   Unemployment insurance and raising the minimum wage are the two biggies.  They know tax increases are off the table, but they're getting huge revenue increases in Obamacare (and Republicans should point that out, over and over). 

But the Republicans have a huge issue looming in the need to bailout the insurance companies when sign-up numbers fail to materialize and insurance companies begin reporting big losses.  They should stake out a ground right now, to introduce legislation to stop any bailout of the insurance industry.  That will appeal across party lines and will receive support from lots of Democrats. 

Start that campaign NOW!!!

They - the GOP - should also begin a campaign to strategically compromise on the subject of unemployment compensation in order to remove it from the democrats' arsenal.  After all, if the GOP manages to control both houses of Congress after Nov. 4th, it becomes much easier to undo that compromise (not easy, just easier).

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Re: Democrats will pay political price for Obamacare in 2014 By BYRON YORK
« Reply #4 on: December 28, 2013, 12:42:33 am »
I'm predicting the Democrats....of course, together with the MSM...will grab onto the loss of unemployment benefits.

On one hand they're bragging about the 'booming economy'...which of course would justify making these people [read: victims] get off their asses finally and find work...but the visual we're going to see are people being thrown out of their homes and begging on the street corners.....thanks of course to a Republican-controlled House.

Predicting it is like bending over and picking up money.  That easy. :whistle:
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Re: Democrats will pay political price for Obamacare in 2014 By BYRON YORK
« Reply #5 on: December 28, 2013, 12:44:47 am »
I'm predicting the Democrats....of course, together with the MSM...will grab onto the loss of unemployment benefits.

On one hand they're bragging about the 'booming economy'...which of course would justify making these people [read: victims] get off their asses finally and find work...but the visual we're going to see are people being thrown out of their homes and begging on the street corners.....thanks of course to a Republican-controlled House.

Predicting it is like bending over and picking up money.  That easy. :whistle:

They've already started grabbing onto it, which is why the republicans need to pull the teeth on that issue now, before it does serious damage and before the republicans manage to humiliate themselves (again) by giving in and acceding to democrats' version of extension after having bitterly opposed any such extension.

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Re: Democrats will pay political price for Obamacare in 2014 By BYRON YORK
« Reply #6 on: December 28, 2013, 12:49:41 am »
They've already started grabbing onto it, which is why the republicans need to pull the teeth on that issue now, before it does serious damage and before the republicans manage to humiliate themselves (again) by giving in and acceding to democrats' version of extension after having bitterly opposed any such extension.

That's right.  Give 'em three months, then take Patty Murray up on her offer to pay for another nine months, if needed.

And do it now.  Don't allow two months of getting hammered over the issue, only to give in anyway.
Roy Moore's "spiritual warfare" is driving past a junior high without stopping.

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Re: Democrats will pay political price for Obamacare in 2014 By BYRON YORK
« Reply #7 on: December 28, 2013, 12:53:00 am »
It's not savvy politically, to dispense 'tough love' to the voters.

But you're 100% correct.
"It aint what you don't know that kills you.  It's what you know that aint so!" ...Theodore Sturgeon

"Journalism is about covering the news.  With a pillow.  Until it stops moving."    - David Burge (Iowahawk)

"It was only a sunny smile, and little it cost in the giving, but like morning light it scattered the night and made the day worth living" F. Scott Fitzgerald

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Re: Democrats will pay political price for Obamacare in 2014 By BYRON YORK
« Reply #8 on: December 28, 2013, 12:59:27 am »
It's not savvy politically, to dispense 'tough love' to the voters.

But you're 100% correct.

It's not savvy to do it at exactly the same time as you're trying to seduce them into voting for you.  Sure, the few sadomasochists in the electorate might enjoy it, but it generally turns off everyone else.

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Re: Democrats will pay political price for Obamacare in 2014 By BYRON YORK
« Reply #9 on: December 28, 2013, 01:09:04 am »
The 800 pound gorilla in the room right now is that the Media is desperately trying to manufacture some kind of win for Obama in the hopes it will distract people from what is really going on.  But too many Obama voters out there have already found out that they have been had, and millions more will after January 1st.

What really worries Dhimmies though, is how many of them have already made their Republican challenger's campaign ads for them...video tape of hundreds of Democrats repeating the lies Obama told to get elected...you can keep you doctor....you can keep your plan....Obama will save you all $2500 a year.  It was all an enormous lie, they all knew it from the beginning but they all voted to put Nancy Pelosi in charge, and it should have been no surprise that this is what she and her minions came up with.

The press cannot cover this up nor can they continue to ignore it.


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Re: Democrats will pay political price for Obamacare in 2014 By BYRON YORK
« Reply #10 on: December 28, 2013, 01:11:39 am »
The 800 pound gorilla in the room right now is that the Media is desperately trying to manufacture some kind of win for Obama in the hopes it will distract people from what is really going on.  But too many Obama voters out there have already found out that they have been had, and millions more will after January 1st.

What really worries Dhimmies though, is how many of them have already made their Republican challenger's campaign ads for them...video tape of hundreds of Democrats repeating the lies Obama told to get elected...you can keep you doctor....you can keep your plan....Obama will save you all $2500 a year.  It was all an enormous lie, they all knew it from the beginning but they all voted to put Nancy Pelosi in charge, and it should have been no surprise that this is what she and her minions came up with.

The press cannot cover this up nor can they continue to ignore it.



The American peoples' ability to be distracted is legendary.  The democrats only need to distract enough that they can get 50% plus 1 of the votes, and that's before their inevitable electoral fraud is factored in.