Well it’s not really Election Day, but it is November 4th.
The Obama administration will eventually get the ObamaCare website right, and that’ not the real issue. However somewhere in the vicinity of 20 million working, VOTING Americans will lose their insurance in the meantime and the website may not be up in time to help them with that. DNC or GOP – they’re gonna be pissed!
But the real danger for the Dems is that something like 90 million working, VOTING Americans are likely to see their annual health care bill rise. Let’s discuss those folks.
(Even as I write this here in Afghanistan this Tuesday morning I am watching “The Kelly File” on FNC and hearing that the estimates I discuss below may be far less than reality.)
While median family income has dropped almost $3,000 since Obama took office it’s difficult for Americans to clearly visualize that… or to blame Obama directly. That much was slow and insidious, and there were many factors that might have brought that about.
Soon millions of Americans will see a single, annual cost that they must endure – the cost of their health care, something they’re already pissed off about – increase as a direct result of a single new law (really dozens of interconnected laws and hundreds of new regulations) called “OBAMA” Care. How they feel about that is the real question.
Less than 2% of about 122 million voters in 2008 was the margin of the popular vote that put Obama into the White House for a second term. That’s about 3.5 million votes. Of course it’s not exactly an even math game with two main candidates and three or more minor party candidates, and in the end it’s the Electoral College that actually matters.
(Funny how Obama embraced winning an election by 2% as a “mandate from the people”, and now dismisses the 6% of Americans who will see their health insurance cancelled as a “small fraction.”)
There are likely to be about 90 million voting Americans negatively affected by ObamaCare (cancelled, higher rates.) Let’s assume that half of those are Dems (nation’s pretty evenly split), and that most of those Dems are ecstatic to pay more so that the poor can have health insurance. But if 10% of that number turn from the Dems on this issue that’s 4+ million votes lost, and that’s enough to throw the next election or two to the GOP in the Congress where the Electoral College is not a factor.
(Despite the abysmal ratings of all members of Congress someone will still get elected)
If ObamaCare and its financial legacy lingers through to November of 2014 I predict that it will be a banner year for the GOP. If ObamaCare turns out to be the reeking mound of crap that I suspect it will be, then ObamaCare will be a stone around the Dems neck until it is either fixed or repealed.
Add to that all of the Socialist, Big Brother, Nanny State changes to health care overall that ObamaCare has swept in (see previous posts), and the long list of scandals that have plagued this administration and I suspect that the total may just be enough to awaken many Republicans who were asleep during the last election and either didn’t vote or cast a ‘protest vote’ for an Independent. It’s also likely that at least some Libertarians will see the fallacy of “fighting the two-party system” and also vote GOP.
(By the way, in many ways I am a Libertarian more and more every day, but when you’re fighting a war for the Constitution and future of America you have to choose one side or the other)
Temper that with the strong possibility that the minor parties will perceive their position as stronger than ever and redouble their efforts to elect candidates, so perhaps my “add to that” may not produce votes for GOP candidates.
But one thing seems certain to me now a full year out from the 2014 mid-terms; working, voting Americans by and large (1) will pay more for insurance, and (2) already see Obama’s promises about keeping our health insurance as outright, willful, intentional deception… and those are commonly referred to as “lies.” Yet the DNC talking heads are actually claiming that ObamaCare will help them at the polls in 2014. They’re dreaming.
Lastly I see little chance that Hillary Clinton can come away from this undamaged, but I may be wrong about that. The media will do their best to protect her, and she holds no smoking gun.
This was a huge miscalculation on the part of the Dems, and I have faith that the American people will finally see the result of unchecked liberalism.