Decision Time: Run From Obamacare or Run ON Obamacare (hint: go with the latter!) [View all]

[napkinz]

[font size="3"]1. Democrats Are In For a World of Hurt If They Keep Running From Obamacare[/font]

by Kevin Drum
March 18, 2014

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There ought to be lots of people who have been helped by Obamacare too. So why haven't the airwaves been blanketed with their stories? Dave Weigel says the answer here is simpler: yes, there are plenty of feel-good Obamacare stories. But Democratic campaigns have neither the money nor, apparently, the DESIRE to use them:

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So Families USA can't or won't help candidates, and the candidates themselves don't have the money to compete. And even if they did, their fear of Obamacare is so palpable that they're probably afraid to campaign positively on it anyway. This is, needless to say, a self-fulfilling prophecy: Republicans make Obamacare toxic with misleading ads; Democrats are afraid to fight back because they don't want to be tainted by Obamacare; and this leaves the field wide open to making Obamacare even more toxic.

Democrats are going to be in a world of hurt this year if they keep this up. There's no running from Obamacare. There just isn't. If they want to win, they'd better emerge from their fetal crouch and start fighting back. Nobody likes candidates who won't stand up and defend their own party's achievements.

read more: http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2014/03/democrats-are-world-hurt-if-they-keep-running-obamacare





[font size="3"]2. Memo to Democrats: Running from Barack Obama won’t work[/font]

by Chris Cillizza
March 18, 2014

West Virginia Rep. Nick Rahall has a problem. He's a Democrat running for reelection this November in a district where President Obama won just 33 percent of the vote in 2012. And he's trying to run as far away from Obama as possible. But it's not working.

Earlier this month, Rahall -- in an attempt to argue his independence from the national Democratic Party -- told The Hill newspaper that he "probably" supported George W. Bush more when the Republican was in the White House than he has supported President Obama.

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The message then is the same as the message now: No matter how much or little you support the president of your party, you will be forced to own that president by the opposing candidate/campaign.

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... the reality for most candidates, especially in the House, is that there just is no way to run away from your president. Rahall, whose poll numbers are plummeting, is learning that lesson right now. And he's learning it the hard way.

read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/03/18/memo-to-democrats-running-from-barack-obama-wont-work/





[font size="3"]3. A Midterm Imperative[/font]

by Eugene Robinson
March 18, 2014

WASHINGTON -- 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 are obviously 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.

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But as a campaign position, "fix what's wrong" sounds weak and equivocal -- especially when contrasted with the bold GOP promise of repeal.

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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 biggest expansion 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 are covered for the first time 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.

read more: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2014/03/18/a_midterm_imperative_121964.html





[font size="3"]4. It’s Time for Democrats to Embrace Obamacare[/font]

by John Cassidy
March 12, 2014

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Trying to pussyfoot around Obamacare was an awkward strategy, and, evidently, it didn’t work. If other Democrats are to avoid meeting Sink’s fate in November, they need something more convincing to say about the Affordable Care Act than “mend it, don’t end it,” which is now their default position. But what could that be?

Here’s a heretical idea. Rather than parsing the individual elements of the law, and trying to persuade voters on an à la carte basis, what about raising the stakes and defending the reform in its entirety as a historic effort to provide affordable health-care coverage to tens of millions of hard-working Americans who otherwise couldn’t afford it? Instead of shying away from the populist and redistributionist essence of the reform, which the White House and many Democrats in Congress have been doing since the start, it’s time to embrace it.

What would that mean? It would involve reaching out to the Democratic Party’s core voters—lower-income people, minorities, highly educated liberals—and portraying Obamacare as the fulfillment of the great human-rights project that began in the nineteen-thirties, under Franklin D. Roosevelt, and was expanded during the nineteen-sixties, under Lyndon Johnson. That message wouldn’t merely be more honest; it would be more effective in getting Democratic voters to turn out in November, which is essential if the Party isn’t to suffer a repeat of 2010.

read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2014/03/its-time-for-democrats-to-embrace-obamacare.html