"Democrats Should Play Offense On Obamacare" NSS

The success of Obamacare will prove the GOP's plutocratic agenda not only impossible but delusional. 

Where's the train wreck? 

American "conservatives" are ever eager to pimp the fabricated freak-out du jour. Don't let them change the subject. Hold them to their assertion that "Obamacare Is A Train Wreck." Require them to take responsibility for their rhetoric. They claim to be "The Party of Personal Responsibility." Demand that they be responsible to truth, that they forsake their serial delusions. Don't let them move along to the next "sacrificial virgin." Keep their feet to the fire! Insist they answer the question: "Where's the train wreck?" It is American conservatives who have run off the rails and it is their own wreck they hope to project on liberals. Conservatives will fabricate any damn thing.  Out of the blue. And whole cloth. 
"The Prince of Darkness" could not be more dim. Republicans and their Tea Bag progeny are ideological fakes terrorizing the nation as surely as bin Laden. Then, when their prediction du jour goes belly up, they simply "change the channel." 

Don't let them.

Instead, ask:

"Where's the train wreck?"

Again and again, ask:

"Where's the train wreck?"

"Where's the train wreck?"

***

Go Bold Or Go Home

By Eugene Robinson, Published: March 17, 2014

Here is what Democrats should learn from their party’s loss in a special House election in Florida last week: Wishy-washy won’t work.

Republicans obviously are going to make opposition to the Affordable Care Act the main theme of their campaigns this fall. Democrats will be better off if they push back hard — really hard — rather than seek some nonexistent middle ground.

Eugene Robinson

Writes about politics and culture in twice-a-week columns and on the PostPartisan blog.

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The contest between Democrat Alex Sink and Republican David Jolly in Florida’s 13th Congressional District was almost like a laboratory experiment. The House seat was held for decades by the late C.W. Bill Young, a Republican, but voters are evenly balanced between the two parties. Sink was better known, having narrowly lost a race for governor in 2010; Jolly had deeper roots in the community. Neither displayed an overabundance of charisma.

Jolly’s narrow victory — he won by about 3,500 votes out of about 184,000 cast — is not a death knell for the Democratic Party’s prospects come autumn. But it does suggest how Democrats should not run in close races. Jolly has to run again in November, and if Sink gets another shot at him, I’d suggest she do things a bit differently.

Jolly ran what amounted to a one-note campaign: Repeal Obamacare. Given the large number of retirees in the district, he hammered away with the untrue GOP claim that the health-care law somehow weakens Medicare. Jolly followed his party’s leadership in declining to propose a coherent set of different health insurance reforms to replace the ACA.

Sink defended President Obama’s signature achievement but added the caveat that she wants to “keep what’s right and fix what’s wrong.” This is the course of action most voters would prefer, according to opinion polls. But as a campaign position, “fix what’s wrong” sounds weak and equivocal — especially when contrasted with the bold GOP promise of repeal.

That promise, of course, is dishonest. House Republicans have already staged 50 meaningless votes to repeal all or part of the Affordable Care Act, knowing that none of the measures had a prayer of making it through the Senate. Even if the GOP were to control both chambers, Obama would veto any repeal bill that reached his desk.

Democrats facing close contests this fall should play offense on Obamacare, not defense. They should tell voters that the ACA is a landmark achievement — the biggestexpansion of access to health care in decades, fulfilling a long-held progressive dream. They should accuse their GOP opponents of playing voters for fools by cynically pretending that repeal is just around the corner.

Democrats should talk about what’s right with the ACA. They should talk about the millions of formerly uninsured Americans who now have coverage. They should talk about the millions of others who now are covered under Medicaid. They should talk about the young people who are able to be covered under their parents’ policies. They should talk about the diabetics and cancer survivors who now cannot be denied coverage because of their conditions.

The Democratic Party has long taken the position that no one should have to declarebankruptcy because of illness, that no one should have to choose between paying for medicine and paying the mortgage. If Democrats can’t proclaim these beliefs with pride, why on earth are they running?

Being positive rather than negative on Obamacare won’t be enough, however. Democrats also need to give their voters a compelling reason to go to the polls — and that means explaining, in the most urgent terms, just what is at stake.

Today’s Republican Party is not “conservative” by any reasonable definition of the word. It is a radical party seeking to dramatically alter the social compact by which we have lived for decades.

Republicans, if they could, would slash Social Security benefits and turn Medicare into a voucher program. They, not Democrats, are the ones who threaten the safety net for seniors.

Republicans refuse to invest in our decaying infrastructure. They want to do away with government regulation that has given us cleaner air, healthier food, safer workplaces. They seek ultimate control over women’s reproductive rights and have already made it oppressively difficult to terminate a pregnancy in many states. Instead of comprehensive immigration reform, they propose “self-deportation.”

The Republican agenda is dangerously wrong for America. The majority coalition that elected Obama twice isn’t accustomed to voting in midterm elections. Democrats need to explain why this year has got to be an exception.

Read more from Eugene Robinson’s archive