How will the GOP capitalize on the golden opportunity presented by Obama’s Katrinapocalypticocaust, the botched Healthcare.gov rollout? Take it away, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor:
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) on Friday blamed Obamacare and its rollout problems for GOP leaders’ decision not to bring up immigration reform in 2013.
“We don’t want a repeat of what’s going on now with Obamacare,” Cantor said during a floor colloquy. “That bill, constructed as it is by the Senate, last-minute ditch effort to get it across the finish line. I think that there is a lot that could be done a lot better in that bill.”
Yeah, I’m sure the rapidly growing Hispanic voter bloc will totally believe that ObamaCare ate the GOP’s immigration reform homework. The exchange website is Perl Harbor*, and it needs to be fixed pronto, but maybe we shouldn’t worry so much. Cantor & Co. are not serious people.
*Courtesy of valued commenter Just Some Fuckhead
chopper
actually the exchange website seems to be doing pretty well right now.
rikyrah
Clyburn: Most Dem defectors wanted to ‘insulate themselves against sound bites’
By Cameron Joseph
Assistant Democratic Leader James Clyburn (D-S.C.) on Sunday said most House Democrats who broke with their party and voted for a GOP-backed health insurance bill did so to “insulate themselves against sound bites.”
Almost 40 House Democrats voted on Friday for a Republican-led bill to to allow everyone to keep their health insurance, regardless of that plan’s quality, splitting with President Obama and their party leadership. Most hail from competitive House districts, and Clyburn says that’s the reason they backed the bill.
“What you saw with those 39 people, maybe nine people had real serious concerns. The fact of the matter is about 30 of them, and I’ve talked to them, were insulating themselves against sound bites. And that’s part of the problem,” Clyburn says on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday morning.
http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/house-races/190493-clyburn-most-dem-defections-on-keep-your-plan-bill-were-for
Zifnab25
“And if those wetbacks don’t believe us, we’ll just make sure they don’t get to vote.”
Yatsuno
I noted this last week but forgot to put something up about it. The Great Oompa-Loompa also has said no immigration reform. In fact, he basically said the House will do absolutely nothing for the rest of the year. Outreach, they haz it.
rikyrah
The thing I love most about assholes like Cantor, is that they pretend Spanish-language media doesn’t exist. And Spanish-language media has been on the true story of what is NOT happening with regards to Immigration Reform.
They understand the real deal and are reporting it.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Over at the Orange Menace some people who were stuck at the website said it’s working now. I am not surprised since I noticed the website horror stories had trailed off this week.
rikyrah
@Yatsuno:
Did you see the report of the two young people confronting Orange Julius at breakfast about Immigration?
Well, if you didn’t in the MSM, don’t worry, it was played in a loop on Spanish-Language Media.
Like I said above, Spanish-Language media is on it.
muricafukyea
Are you people that dumb to be repeating GOP talking points? “Botched rollout”. You people cannot even keep a fucking WordPress site running properly. Wtf do you know about rolling out something as complicated as healthcare.gov? Some experts say it may be one of the most complex mult-database websites ever. By that standard anyone who knows anything about says it’s been quite amazing they have had as few problems as they did. That goes double considering it’s a gov’t project.
It was only a few years ago most of you were whining that if you don’t get single payer you are not voting or whatever. The stupid it burns.
Betty Cracker
@muricafukyea:
“I think it’s legitimate for (Americans) to expect me to have to win back some credibility. And, you know, that’s on me. I mean, we fumbled the rollout on this.”
— President Barack Obama, dumb-ass repeater of GOP talking points.
some guy
@Betty Cracker:
clearly, we all need to learn how to clap louder, including the Kenyan Muslim.
too bad about our Gators last night, soooo close and yet so far away.
Tripod
@rikyrah:
Like bad generals fighting the last war, bad political strategists are gearing up to re-fight 2010.
The message coming out of the LA-5 special election: Obamacare BAD, Medicaid expansion GOOD…..American public need BRAINS….
maya
New Rep slogan: WHATEVER IT IS, NO, WE CANTOR!
Cantor wait for the tee shirts.
piratedan
just get the feeling that a boatload of this ACA stuff is going to be completely forgotten when all those people who registered, start getting out there and make the decisions on the plans that they’re going to buy. Sad part of the story, is that as soon as that starts happening to pushback on all of this hysteria, the GOP can start taking the country hostage again and we’ll watch the MSM follow breathlessly along as this is the first time that this has ever happened and that the GOP is actually concerned about the debt and the financial security of the nation.
Paddy
Sigh. I need to stop watching the Sunday shows.
Video- Meet The Press: David Gregory- ACA Problems “Comparable To Iraq”
MattF
I saw this yesterday, and thought “Are they really this screwed up?” Yes, they are.
“It’s because– Obamacare!”
“It’s because– Benghazi!”
“It’s because– Eric Holder!”
“It’s because– not bombing North Korea!”
“It’s because– oral sex!” (This is the Cooch special.)
So, now I’m somewhat less worried. Thank you, Eric Cantor.
raven
Blackwater’s Eric Prince, “During Vietnam the anti-war left went after the troops, in Iraq the went after Blackwater”. Did Blackwater employee’s kill innocent civilians? “It’s entirely possible”.
gene108
I agree with Cantor. He’s right.
Change brings uncertainty. Unanticipated problems always happen, when you try to change anything. Obamacare is evidence of that.
The best thing to do is nothing, so nothing ever changes and we can all be content with the status quo.
I hope Cantor will go onto further point out how Virginia made unnecessary changes by allowing Jews to vote and hold elected office.
Baud
@Paddy:
Obama lied to us about weapons of mass uninsured.
Yatsuno
@Betty Cracker: Congrats Betty. You’ve been Durfed.
Alex S.
@rikyrah:
I wonder if the politically best outcome of this is a bill passed by republicans and the vulnerable red state democrats, Begich, Landrieu etc…. strongly condemning the rollout, maybe even demanding changes of the bill, or something like that, that is then getting vetoed by the President. It allows those democrats to get some distance to Obama but keeps Obama’s legacy intact. The problem is that this already signals a lame-duck status of the President and the narrative that he’s lost Congress. But then if the Dems lose their Senate majority, nothing significant will happen in the next 3 years anyway. The only thing that might pass is immigration reform – because big business supports that. That’s why Cantor feels the need to announce its death.
Bill E Pilgrim
@muricafukyea:
I think you’re at the wrong blog.
Hill Dweller
@Alex S.: The Dems already own Obamacare. The best to way to inoculate themselves from political attacks is to defend the law.
Obama grandfathered in tens of millions of insurance policies that didn’t meet the ACA standards in an effort to eliminate a huge disruption to the insurance market. He also gave people who bought insurance after ACA passage nearly four years to transition to a policy that met minimum coverage standards. They’ve gone to great lengths to accommodate people and help them pay for insurance.
Stop running from ACA, which is a losing strategy, and stand up for the legislation.
Betty Cracker
@Bill E Pilgrim: I think Yatsuno is right: We’re taking troll bait.
Baud
@Hill Dweller:
This 1000%.
And the same advice applies to the rest of us.
JPL
@Paddy: I’m not going to link to David Gregory because doing so might cause harm to my computer. How did Nancy do?
Yatsuno
@Betty Cracker: Durf is an old old racist sexist homophobic troll who thinks he knows American politics better than we do despite his delightful sinecure in Vancouver BC. So yeah, that whole all Canadians are nice stereotype is ridonkulous.
GregB
@Betty Cracker:
I can only assume that the GOP will then attack Obama for allowing the big bad insurance companies to continue screwing the good people of America by allowing them to extend their shitty policies.
The GOP is never held accountable.
Paddy
@JPL: Nanc was shakey, but got most of her points across. Gregory is such a GOP suckbutt that sometimes I just scream.
Paddy
@Baud: Had to add that to the post.
bemused
Cantor and the rest of the Republicans can make up the most ludicrous crap over and over and their voters will believe them. Even if they don’t necessarily believe all the bullshit, they’ll vote for them anyway because Democrats are totally to blame for everything wrong in their lives.
patrick
@GregB:
Isn’t the GOP cute though? Before the ACA, the Republicans NEVER cared about when the insurance companies kicked people off their insurance plans because of pre-existing conditions. NEVER.
And now, we are supposed to believe that the GOP actually care when they claim that they are outraged that people are kicked off crappy insurance plans to be replaced by something better? Oh, also, great job by the media for not pointing out the GOP hypocrisy!
Baud
@bemused:
Fixed.
Gene108
@Hill Dweller:
As much as I agree with you in principle, the reality is a lot of Democrats in conservative areas have been dealing with a national party that is loathed where they live.
When it stops being effective for Republicans to quit running ads showing the Democrat sharing the same planet as Pelosi and Obama, I think I can see the benefit in you prescription.
rdldot
@chopper: Exactly, but you’ll never hear that reported. It’s already in the ether that it’s broken so that’s it. I got in a couple of weeks ago and last week got my subsidy amt and this morning went back and chose my policy. I’m really grateful we’ve have this option (at least until it gets snatched away).
Mike in NC
As an alternative to PPACA, the Republicans should roll out “CantorCare”: every man, woman, and child in America will be given an annual free carton of the cigarettes manufactured in Eric’s district. They’ll even get to pick the brand!
Gene108
More Republicans bucked their Party to avoid a default, but it is not as big a rift as this vote.
NotMax
@Mike in NC
But the website to choose a brand won’t work.
debbie
I wish Obama would directly respond to all the accusations of his intentionally lying. I’m hearing more and more Conservatives insisting he was lying about this back in 2008 just to get more votes in Congress.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
How is it more people aren’t offended by this? I’ve felt for years the Village is morally and intellectually bankrupt, but it just goes to show, once again, no matter how cynical you get, you can’t keep up with these people.
Yatsuno
@Gene108: DEMOCRATS IN DISARRAY!!! Republicans have “minor dissenting voices”.
Jennifer
Shorter Cantor: “Just look at the Obamacare site. What are the odds we won’t fuck up immigration reform?”
Not really what I would consider a powerful message, but have at it, boys.
Baud
@debbie:
Disagree. This is one of those, “if you’re explaining, you’re losing” situations. No amount of additional explanations will convince Republicans. See Benghazi.
piratedan
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: the scary thing, someone calling out Gregory for these kinds of asinine statements would make for great TV. The smooth urbane Gregory spouting out some nonsense like this and someone taking issue stating how dare he equate the implementation of a health care law with the invasion of another country and question his right to even attempt to equate the two.
Elizabelle
@Hill Dweller:
Agree. Obamacare is good for this country, and it’s ridiculous to have families and individuals without affordable health insurance and healthcare access.
If Democrats are loathed in one’s district, maybe one needs to educate one’s voters that much more energetically. Go down fighting if need be.
It would be nice if we had a functioning broadcast media that would report seriously on healthcare shortcomings in the US. But we don’t. They’re hysterics in search of ratings. It is what it is.
Elizabelle
If Eric Cantor was tall enough to be a Los Angeles Laker, he would still be one of the smallest people around.
He’s horrid. Gonna take his place in Virginia history alongside the heroes of “Massive Resistance” and various misanthropes.
Do you remember which Republican congresscritters railed against FDR’s New Deal initiatives?
Me neither.
Hill Dweller
@Gene108: Nearly every Dem that ran away from Obamacare in 2010 lost. Moreover, Dems already own Obamacare. Running from it at this point will just look craven.
Dems need to start talking about the horrors of the insurance market before Obamacare, the solutions to said horrors in the law, and contrasting it with Republicans’ lack of alternatives. They really need to hammer home the fact they went to great lengths to prevent a massive disruption to the insurance market.
Gene108
@patrick:
As far as the media is concerned Republicans are VSP and what they are talking about at this very moment is what they have always believed and will continue to believe.
This is why, on Jan 21 , 2009, Republicans were rarely challenged about their “concerns” on deficit spending caused by bailing out GM and Chrysler and later the ARRA.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Betty Cracker: I was amused at the idea that this place is full of DFH purists who were demanding single payer and vowing not to vote for Democrats anymore if they didn’t get it. People like that are generally treated like hor d’oeuvres here. Not really expecting to engage in any sane dialog, it just cracked me up.
srv
@Jennifer: God knows what would happen if those Mexicans could get into theintertubes.
Josie
@rikyrah: I think it’s entirely possible that they are not pretending. Since they don’t read or listen to Spanish language media, for them it doesn’t exist. Anyone in such a bubble as they were during the last election would not be aware of Spanish language media or realize how many voters pay attention to it.
patrick II
Shorter Issa: We are too busy subverting healthcare to subvert immigration reform.
Roger Moore
@rikyrah:
FTFY. Although it’s common to ignore it, immigration affects more than just Spanish speakers. It’s a big deal to all kinds of immigrants, and most new immigrant communities have media in their home languages. Spanish may be the biggest, but you can bet that opposition to immigration reform had something to do with the recent, massive swing of Asian Americans from Republican to Democrat, and that native language media coverage had a lot to do with it.
Elizabelle
Here’s something more appealing out of the Richmond VA area:
Cheetah-cam! Live from the Metro Richmond Zoo.
Five baby cheetahs, who turn 6 weeks old tomorrow, and their mom.
No cats in sight just now; they’re out romping in their paddock, most likely.
Be patient. They are worth it.
srv
@Bill E Pilgrim: Y’all aren’t keeping up with the memes. Some on the right are saying Obama wanted ACA to fail as a means to ram single-payer down our throats.
Your lack of faith in the 11th dimension is disturbing.
Gene108
@Hill Dweller:
The question is the optics of backing Pelosi and Obama, in public, I think.
I have sympathy for their concern of attack ads. I think they know what flies in their districts.
As far as support for Obamacare goes, I think most Democrats are behind now, with few exceptions. Even the suggested Dem fixes do not undermine the law the way Republicans would like.
If you want politicians to run towards your view publicly, you have to build the support for them to do that.
I do not know how to do that in the current media environment.
rdldot
Hill Dweller is right. The Dems own Obamacare and they need to stop talking about the ‘glitches’ or F-ups and start talking about the stuff that’s working. I’m really tired of how they seem to think they’re going to win over Republicans. Eff them. We need to keep talking about what we’re doing to fix things and how the Republicans are just trashing the place. And get our people out to vote. That’s the most important thing right now. We outnumber them – and have to beat them. We’ve got to get out there and vote.
Elizabelle
@Hill Dweller:
HD said: “Dems need to start talking about the horrors of the insurance market before Obamacare, the solutions to said horrors in the law, and contrasting it with Republicans’ lack of alternatives. They really need to hammer home the fact they went to great lengths to prevent a massive disruption to the insurance market.”
Yes, yes, yes!
Kids on parents’ policies until age 26, and signing up for healthcare despite preexisting conditions are wildly popular.
Take a bow, and promise that more good is on the way.
Turn the discussion to the fact that the federal website was swamped because so many Republican governors and legislatures did not want to have anything to do with the Affordable Care Act. Explain why Medicaid expansion is such a good deal, and so important, in what is still a slow economy for working families.
Courage, Democrats.
jayboat
@piratedan:
Sounds like a job for Mr Colbert…
Anoniminous
@Elizabelle:
We did “educate vigorously.” We damn near went door to door telling people ACA was the greatest thing ever and would really help them and the Democrats were looking out for people.
And then the President goes on national TV and basically announces, “Hey peeps. Know that ACA thing? God it sucks.”
Guess what that does for our credibility.
piratedan
@jayboat: a shame that the Comedy channel show is the one with the most insightful political commentary, (not that I don’t adore Colbert) isn’t it?
Bill E Pilgrim
@srv: Yeah but I don’t think that’s where the comment above was coming from. I’ve just rarely if never seen anyone defend Obama more fanatically than most of the people here, it was pretty funny. Especially when the supposed offense was calling the rollout botched, since as Betty pointed out O himself agrees that it was.
For an actual defense of Obama in a way that’s actually merited, I like this:
http://www.salon.com/2013/11/15/no_obama_didnt_lie_to_you_about_your_health_care_plan_partner/
debbie
@Baud:
The alternative is that the accusation will fester and never go away. The Swift Boaters got their bullshit rooted in the national consciousness because Kerry chose not to respond.
Keith P
Wasn’t the failure to take on immigration due to Obama refusing to negotiate over the debt limit? Or was that last month’s excuse?
Betty Cracker
@Anoniminous: Wait, what? No he didn’t. He acknowledged problems with the roll out, which was wise because there ARE problems. There’s nothing to be gained from denying reality.
Baud
@debbie:
He’s already responded. He didn’t ignore it like Kerry did.
FlipYrWhig
@Anoniminous: “basically announces” is doing a a fuckload of heavy lifting in your little scenario, ain’t it?
Hill Dweller
@Gene108: They don’t have to back Obama and Pelosi per se. They just have to talk about the problems with the health care market before Obamacare and the solutions in the law. If they’re in a red state, hammer Republicans for blocking medicaid expansion, which will help working people, and having no solutions for our problems. There is far more good than bad in the law. They just have to continually highlight the good.
Bill E Pilgrim
@debbie: See this for some perspective. It’s not from Obama but Dean Baker is a smart guy, and by no means always an Obama defender.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I like Kerry, but he was one of those who internalized the whole notion of the “liberal media”, his good friends like Brokaw and Joe Klein would never let such a thing stand! (see also, too, Bob Shrum, I suspect). His ex-wife was so pissed off by those ads she wanted to go public, but the campaign thought that would just draw too much attention to them
Anoniminous
@Betty Cracker:
The Reality of the situation don’t mean nothing. What people here, in deepest Derpistan, are hearing is “The President said ACA sucks.” They are hearing, “Democrats are saying ACA sucks.” And they are hearing it 24/7.
debbie
@Bill E Pilgrim:
Thanks for the link. I have to steel myself for the family arguments over Thanksgiving, so I’m memorizing his last paragraph:
debbie
@Anoniminous:
Like Boehner whenever he claims to speak for “the American people,” when really it’s just that 27% everyone loves to fear.
Yatsuno
@Bill E Pilgrim: Policy cancellations and major changes have been standard practice for health insurers since I can remember. Even Medicare changes its coverage rules every year. There is a practical reason for this: the art of medicine changes constantly. Medical treatments are deemed less effective than newer ones and standards of care change over time. Plus a health insurer may need to balance an actuarial pool so they swap some folks around into new coverage pools but that also requires a policy change. Honestly I’ve never had a health plan stay stable from year to year ever. And anyone who thought theirs would never change is an idiot.
That makes Obama’s promise foolish. But it’s foolish not fatal.
debit
OT, but can we have a football thread so I can ask Cole why the Steelers are playing football in their Halloween jammies?
Bill E Pilgrim
@debbie: Our “liberal media” has so thoroughly ingested the Republican talking point pills on this one, it’s now coursing through their system at high concentrations, that even those facts from Dean Baker which should serve as an antidote won’t have any effect at this point. The half-wits like Bill Maher have decided “Come on, he lied!” and there’s the ball game on that one.
They booted the Web site rollout. He admits it, everyone sees it. It’s not the end of the world. “Obama lied!” is by contrast total bullshit, but it all gets wrapped up into one at this point.
JPL
@debit: Betty’s to busy watching Tampa Bay and the Falcons.
IowaOldLady
If the Rs plan to run on Obamacare in 2014, I say bring it on. That’s forever away in political terms. By next summer, web problems will be long past and people will have experience with how this all works. They won’t appreciate someone compaigning on taking it away.
Hill Dweller
@Yatsuno: But there is nothing in Obamacare that would make people with grandfathered policies change them. Keep in mind, Obama was trying to assuage fears of massive upheaval in the insurance market after the ACA became law. They grandfathered in tens of millions of policies and gave people nearly four years to get a insurance policy that complied with the ACA. They did everything possible to create a smooth transition on their end. That point needs to be continually hammered home.
Betty Cracker
@Anoniminous: I agree that some running-scared Blue Doggies have undermined the ACA with criticism of the law itself, but if people are hearing “the president says ACA sucks,” their hearing is so impaired Obama might as well say the ACA gives people underpants squirrels or makes them shit gold nuggets. On no planet did he remotely say anything like “ACA sucks.” He acknowledged website issues, which exist. I tend to distrust people who piss on my leg and telling me it’s raining MORE than folks who are straight-up with me about problems I can see for myself.
Betty Cracker
@JPL: Haha, busted. I’ll post one if no one else has anything in the works.
Elizabelle
From Eric Cantor’s district: political columnist Jeff Schapiro today in the Richmond Times Dispatch aka the Disgrace:
Triple Trouble for Virginia Republicans
(Schapiro’s talking state politics, but this holds for national GOP too.)
Problem No. 3 was putting up their 2013 gubernatorial ticket via convention of crazies, which selected ultraconservative Ken Cuccinelli and wild ass E.W. Jackson, vs. the usual Republican primary. I suspect Republicans have learned that lesson. It’s the easiest change for them to make.
Illustrated with a nice pic of Eric Cantor leading white men in suits through halls of marble.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Yatsuno: I agree with Baker’s points, when Obama said “if you like your plan” he was referring to the plans people had at the time, before ACA started. If insurance companies introduced plans in the short gap between then and when it went into effect that wouldn’t be allowed, it’s pretty sleazy to try to turn that into anyone “lying”.
JPL
@Betty Cracker: Race to the bottom and we are winning. Our backup running back is out due to trying to eat his marijuana stash in front of a police officer.
Comrade Jake
I’m sure that many of you have commented on this elsewhere, but it just strikes me as incredibly awful that so much of the media attention has been focused on the “losers” whose policies were cancelled. We’re talking about people who, on average, were relatively healthy in the first place, or who could probably afford to pay quite a bit more for insurance. They’re “losers” because they’ll be asked to pay a little bit more for better coverage that won’t leave them out in the cold if they actually get sick. If we had a Republican president the same media would be calling these people freeloaders.
Meanwhile, where is the discussion of the 5M+ poor people whose access to Medicare has been denied by Republican governors? Aren’t those people the real losers here? Drive me nucking futs.
jharp
Stand up with us (Hoosiers for Medicaid Expansion)! Tuesday the 19th 1-2 PM at the State House.
It is time for Indiana to join this success!
Can somebody here help get the word out?
https://www.facebook.com/HoosiersforMedicaidExpansion?directed_target_id=0&_fb_noscript=1
Higgs Boson's Mate (Crystal Set)
@muricafukyea:
Thanks for another incandescent comment.
dmbeaster
@Hill Dweller:
Exactly. Which is part of the reason why the Obama apology strategy backfires. He needs to vigorously defend his policy, warts and all.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Kerry had a lot of problems in addition to Swift Boating. His campaign was terrible. There were 4 or 5 liberal orgs running around in circles here and then there was “Kerry’s campaign”. There was grifting going on. You know what it was like? Mitt Romney’s campaign.
There was a real disconnect too, between liberals’ perception or belief of Bush’s unpopularity and Bush’s ACTUAL unpopularity, which is another scary similarity with Romney.
The Bush campaign ran rings around us in Ohio. They were just better.
The (actual) Kerry campaign did some good things. They started the focus on young people that Obama built on and they had a “vote builder” type program that local county people could use and Kerry then gave Obama that list, but Kerry had all kinds of problems in addition to swift boating. Democrats had problems, and it could happen again if the candidate doesn’t know how to say “no”.
Roger Moore
@Elizabelle:
The problem for the Democrats is that Problem 2 is a long-term issue rather than a short-term one. Gerrymandering into safe districts may cause the Republicans to go crazy pursuing the primary voters in their crazy districts, but that’s not going to come back to bite them until the next round of redistricting, presumably in 2022. The Democrats are going to have an uphill fight until then.
Anoniminous
@debbie:
When an election has a 42% voter turn out 27% is the majority.
We came into this little foo-foo with ACA losing and things are getting worse.
I don’t give a damn about the ACA. I do care that, at the moment, ACA is turning into a negative for the 2014 elections. If the GOP can recapitulate the 2010 voter turnout using this as the wedge issue we’re going to be stuck with the bastards until 2017.
Elizabelle
@Anoniminous:
The Affordable Care Act is a gamechanger. It starts the process of removing healthcare from employers’ control and puts it with individuals and families.
Portable, high quality insurance. No more screening for pre-existing conditions, no more rescissions (cancellation by insurance companies).
Eye on the longterm game here.
We live in a country and time where many employers aren’t offering full-time work or wages, much less healthcare insurance. The nature of employment, and loyalty, has changed.
gene108
@Hill Dweller:
From what I’ve seen of Democrats on T.V. they are doing this.
I think this vote is not symptomatic of how Democrats have been reacting to the Obamacare roll-out. It is more of an outlier than anything else.
Even with 40 Democrats making a symbolic vote, 160 Democrats voted against it. That’s 20% for the Republican bill and 80% against it.
Elizabelle
@Anoniminous:
PS: Virginia voters surprised Republicans this year, who were counting on a low turnout election.
We need to figure out how to get young people and presidential only voters to pull their weight in off-year elections.
SiubhanDuinne
JSF also gave us “The eBay of Pigs.” Both are Simply.Brilliant.
Liberty60
I think its useful for avid political junkies like us to take a deep breath every so often, and talk to a normal person.
For people who don’t read Memeorandum, Politico, or any of the other sites, this is all “Something something Obamacare site troubles” wedged in between news of Batkid and Jennifer Lawrence.
In other words, those who supported the Tea Party last week still do, those who are disgusted by them last week still are, and all the hysteria vanishes, Benghazi-like, into the memory hole with the new news cycle.
Meanwhile, the vast majority of people who have insurance based coverage still do, those who don’t are getting it, and are in most cases paying much less.
And, the nightmare scenario of the right wing is coming true- everyone is very quickly becoming accustomed to the benefits of having their 25 year old kids staying on their plan, and not being kicked off when they file a claim, and not having pre-existing conditions becoming a scarlet letter.
So next fall, when Tea Party Joe runs on repealing Obamacare, the attack ads will say, “Tea Party Joe wants to kick your son or daugher off your insurance and wants shady insurance company executives deciding behind closed doors what medical treatment you get!” (cue grainy black and white footage, and scary music).
We are winning this fight. All we need is courage and determination.
Baud
@Elizabelle:
I read somewhere that the turnout was normal for a gubernatorial election and they still lost.
Baud
@Liberty60:
Thank you. Exactly right.
Jamey
The reason I despise twats like Cantor isn’t that they’re twats; it’s that they have no compunction about insulting other peoples’ intelligence.
Because, yeah, but for (R)’s obstruction of Obamacare, we would TEWTALLY have a rapidly advancing Immigration Reform package…
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
@SiubhanDuinne: I think he’s dreamy.
gene108
@IowaOldLady:
It depends, if any of the people who have been helped by Obamacare can break through whatever media filter exists that ignore those types of stories.
So far young adults being saved from horrific debt, because they had a problems but were on parents insurance and/or children getting needed care because insurance couldn’t drop them because of their pre-existing conditions have largely been ignored, in favor of everything that isn’t going smoothly with Obamacare.
I’m not hopeful right now that Obamacare will be a positive for 2014.
I was once, but the totally unbalanced coverage of the roll out really has me worrying.
taylormattd
“valued”
rdldot
@Jamey: Right – this crap only plays to the people who already agree with him. We need to stop reacting to those people because they will never vote for Dems anyway. We need to focus on getting out our own people. I don’t remember which one of the Dems said it during one of the hearings about the ACA, but NOBODY believes the Republicans are trying to make the ACA better. Hell, Republicans don’t even believe that crap.
Elizabelle
@SiubhanDuinne:
And fuckhead gave us the Republican message to single women:
If you could keep a man, you’d be voting Republican.
Anoniminous
@Baud:
Virginia Voting Age population is 6,339,741. Taking the 2012 turnout (66.9%) as the ‘voter demographic,’ i.e., the Va population who will vote, we get 4,241,287 (rounded). Total votes cast in 2013 was 2,235,284 or 50% turnout of my calculated voter demographic – down ~16.9% from 2012. If we use Voting Age population 2013 turnout was – roughly – 40% turnout – although I’m not sure that tells us anything :-). There was a net increase of ~235,000 total votes in 2013 wrt 2009, roughly in-line with the state’s population increase over the past four years.
In 2009 there was 2,000,819 total votes, out of a computed 4,034,822 voter demographic or roughly 50%.
One can play around with these numbers in several different ways and shave a percentage or two off either way. I think – invoking Occam’s Razor – the percentage of voters was “the same” with the anecdotal data of larger turnout as more people voting due to the population increase.
feebog
A couple of regular commenters on this blog have already noted that they have signed up through the exchange. I would like to hear more about their experience from beginning to end. Obviously, the website problems are being resolved. As more people are able to sign up with little or no complications the narrative will begin to change.
In late January the Republicans will again take their eyes off the ball and threaten to shut down the government. They might even go through with it. Again. By the time the smoke clears, it will be apparent that all the website glitches were just that, glitches, and millions of people who had been denied health care in the past are now covered. Sign ups will continue through March and the goals will be met. Hand wringing Democrats will emerge from their bunkers and realize that this is going to work after all and they need to jump on the bandwagon.
Fair Economist
@Hill Dweller:
The point to make: Obamacare makes it possible for the first time *ever*, to buy real health insurance as an individual. Before, no matter how “Cadillac” the plan, if you got a serious chronic condition, your insurance covered one year, and then you got cancelled. If you got heart disease, many cancers, immunological problems, etc., you didn’t really have insurance, just a one-year grace period. Literally millions of people went bankrupt because they *thought* they had real insurance but didn’t – because it didn’t even exist. This is separate from the basically fraudulent issues from excessively low caps or uncovered treatments; it was an inherent problem from free-market insurance.
Now, thanks to Obamacare, not only is it *possible* to get real insurance, it’s even guaranteed to be affordable. That’s an almost unlimited amount of win.
GregB
Whenever one of these GOP politicians starts mewling about people losing insurance someone should play the clip of the GOP debate moment when Ron Paul and the GOP crowd cheered on the idea of citizens dying without healthcare.
Anoniminous
Comment Deleted
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@gene108:
I’m not going to worry until around February. If there are the same reports of website troubles etc., then it might impact the 2014 elections. But if everything is working reasonably smoothly and people are being covered, the issue will be moot.
SiubhanDuinne
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader:
I know. I’m sitting here writing “SiubhanDuinneFuckhead, SiubhanDuinneFuckhead” over and over, with little tiny hearts over the “i”s.
Betty Cracker
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader: And more popular than Jeeeeesus!
agrippa
Katrinapocalypticocaust,
Good word.
The ‘botched roll out’ will bring an end to ________________.
Nous sommes trahis!!
Sauve qui peut!!
TopClimber
@Gene108: Don’t get lost in the headcounting. The numbers only matter when the issue is close. Allowing vulnerable Dems to cover their asses on a bill that Obama has signaled (wink-wink) he will veto is what we call 1-dimensional chess.
TopClimber
@Gene108: Don’t get lost in the headcounting. The numbers only matter when the issue is close. Allowing vulnerable Dems to cover their asses on a bill that Obama has signaled (wink-wink) he will veto is what we call 1-dimensional chess.@Fair Economist: Yes! This is what “if you like your health insurance plan you can keep it” really means.
Cacti
Healthcare.gov, just like Iraq and Katrina…
Except for the tens of thousands of dead people.
But they were brown, so they didn’t really count.
Roger Moore
@Cacti:
If the Villagers don’t know them personally, they don’t count.
Mike
@Elizabelle: Not to rain on the parade, but you do realize the sheer insanity of this? If you’re already conceding that the American people are so stupid they literally can’t remember what the insurance market was like less than three years ago, then there isn’t the slightest chance they’ll do anything but put Ted Cruz in the White House to de-Shariah-ize the country. Really, after Katrina, two lost wars and 9/11 with not a moment of accountability, if the people are enraged over a website, it’s time to pack your bags and move to Canada.
Roger Moore
@Mike:
It’s not so much that people can’t remember the past as it is that they’re constantly distracted by the latest manufactured scandal. That’s the whole point of Republican scandal mongering and all the other aspects of the RWNM. The Republicans can’t win on the big picture, so they throw up a smokescreen of manufactured scandals and other nonsense to keep people bogged down thinking about the small picture. The Democrats can’t win by trying to counter the Republican points one by one, since it’s too easy for them to move on to a new lie every time an old one is exposed. In the absence of a news media that’s willing to call Republicans on their lies and stop reporting them, the Democrats’ best plan is to put the focus back on the big picture: how badly the Republicans bungled things when they were in charge, how they’re messing things up now, how horrible things were under the old insurance system, etc. It’s not so much reminding people who have forgotten as setting up a counter-narrative that will get people focused on the Democrats’ strengths.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay:
2004 was the first presidential election cycle in which several websites started aggregating state polls to try to estimate the electoral count. But it was only 2008 in which people started realizing in a big way that the approach really worked. If you’d looked at the last week of polls in 2004 via electoral-vote.com, RealClearPolitics or Sam Wang and ignored any tendentious “corrections” to the data (like the one Wang applied–he never made that mistake again), you’d have been able to call the election. But that wasn’t clear at the time.
Or at least it wasn’t clear to Democrats. And I still wonder whether it was because the art of poll aggregation was just getting started, or because Democrats didn’t want Kerry to be losing, just like all the Republicans tossing around “unskewed polls” in 2012. Poll aggregators tended to underestimate the size of the Republican wave in 2010, but, to their credit, I don’t know of any who thought it wasn’t happening. I suppose we’d need another Democratic Presidential loss to be sure.
Matt McIrvin
…Also, to be fair to Kerry ’04 supporters, 2004 was really a much, much closer election than either 2008 or 2012. It was only not extraordinarily close by comparison with 2000. You could convince yourself that it could go either way by putting your thumb on the scale in a quite understated way.
fuckwit
It is a sad, sad, brutally bleak testament to how completely the Right Wing Noise Machine owns and dominates and determines the media agenda.
The talking points went out IMMEDIATELY upon launch: FIND EXAMPLES OF PRIVILEGED UPPER MIDDLE CLASS WHITE PEOPLE WITH GREAT INSURANCE WHO LOST IT AND HYPE THE SHIT OUT OF THEM!
So FAUX “news” does a segment on this, AND LIES THEIR ASS OFF, and gets CAUGHT lying, just completely making shit up, people that had completely fabricated their stories, and NOBODY BLINKS, and they keep right on with that narrative.
Look people. Here’s a useful heuristic:
As soon as you catch someone lying blatantly, willfully, fabricating and dissembling about some shit, THEIR WHOLE STORY IS SUSPECT, their agenda, the point they’re trying to make, their political worldview. Because if you’re so desperate about something that you are willing to lie, and worse if you get caught and you just don’t care, then you are not to be trusted with ANYTHING.
Yeah yeah, I know, that’s their whole projection story: “Obama lied about keeping your insurance!”. Keep repeating that big lie, hiding your own big lie, as in when you had to fabricate people who supposedly had that problem.
Reality: The right wing OWNS the narrative, OWNS the media, and that’s the narrative they want. Not how many people who are poor and could never afford medical insurance until now. No sir, THAT”S NOT THE FUCKING STORY WE WANT!!! We want the story about privileged white people losing their insurance…. and having to choose a different one. We care about those poor, miserable people making over $100k/year who don’t qualify for subsidies (and why don’t they? Because of means testing… added in DELIBEERATELY and forcefully by the Rethugs).
I’m tired of all this bullshit. Our media is a boil on the ass of the country.