Schumer: Dems erred with ObamaCare

Democrats made a strategic mistake by passing the Affordable Care Act, Sen. Charles Schumer (N.Y.), the third-ranking member of the Senate Democratic leadership, said Tuesday.

Schumer says Democrats “blew the opportunity the American people gave them” in the 2008 elections, a Democratic landslide, by focusing on healthcare reform instead of legislation to boost the middle class.

“After passing the stimulus, Democrats should have continued to propose middle class-oriented programs and built on the partial success of the stimulus,” he said.

He said the plight of uninsured Americans caused by “unfair insurance company practices” needed not be addressed but it wasn’t the change that people wanted when they elected Barack Obama as president.

“Americans were crying out for an end to the recession, for better wages and more jobs; not for changes in their healthcare,” he said.

He noted that 85 percent of all Americans got their healthcare from either the government, through Medicare or Medicaid, or through an employer.

“So when Democrats focused on healthcare, the average middle class person thought, ‘the Democrats are not paying enough attention to me,’” he said.

Schumer's concession is a striking change of tone from what he said shortly after the passage of the healthcare law, when he predicted that ObamaCare would turn out to be a strong political issue for his party.

“I predict … by November those who voted for healthcare will find it an asset, those who voted against it will find it a liability,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” in March 2010.

A slew of Senate Democrats, including Blanche Lincoln (Ark.), Mark Pryor (Ark.), Mark Begich (Alaska), Kay Hagan (N.C.) and Mark Udall (Colo.), who voted for the bill, however, ended up losing in 2010 or 2014. Republicans attacked them constantly for voting for ObamaCare, an attack that became more potent after the law’s error-prone rollout.

On Tuesday, Schumer said that behind the scenes he told other Democratic Party leaders, however, that they should not have focused on ObamaCare instead of jobs and the economy.

Schumer’s post-mortem: Democrats must ‘embrace government’ -- "Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Tuesday said the Democratic Party must make a better effort to win over the middle class if it is to rebound from a disastrous midterm election.

Schumer in a speech at the National Press Club urged Democrats to embrace their identity of seeing government as a solution for stagnating middle-class incomes. He warned that in defeat, the party must avoid recasting itself as a different version of the Republican Party......."

Oh no you don’t!

Hey Chuck! You a$$hats insisted Obamacare WOULD help the economy. It would put MORE money into the middle class wallets by SAVING them so much. It WOULD bring down the cost of health insurance across the board, and that would creat jobs and grow the economy.

You don’t get a 20/20, armchair quarterback do over now. You communists pushed this through on Christmas Eve using a tax legislation trick called “reconciliation”. You had to change the name of a previously passed bill that was unrelated and already approved to call it reconcilliation. Democrats subverted the letter and intent of all legilative rules and our constitution to RAM this $hit down the the throats of Americans against the majority will.

No, Sir. Democrats need to just keep chewing the fat on this one. Good luck getting the stink off.

They're setting the stage for Hillary.

11/25/14: "Terry McAuliffe is unhappy – with Democrats - Clinton confidant sounds off on his party’s electoral bumbling"

PETERSBURG, Va. – "Don’t be fooled by the expansive grin, outstretched arms and the booming baritone with which Terry McAuliffe greets throngs of churchgoers here: The governor of Virginia is frustrated.

Not with his job in Richmond — McAuliffe says he has loved every second of it. The only problem with being governor, he laments, is that sometimes he has to sleep. If powerful Republicans have stymied McAuliffe’s legislative agenda, he takes it in stride. On his overarching goal — economic development — the governor pronounces his administration “as wildly successful as anything I could want to do.”

It’s McAuliffe’s own party that has him down.

He begins carefully — “I don’t mean to be overly critical …” — but then he gets rolling. In a 2014 campaign fought against a backdrop of dropping unemployment and record highs for the Dow, he says there’s no excuse for Democrats to cede the argument on jobs to Republicans. “They didn’t talk about it!” he exclaims. “They didn’t have a strategy.”

“Why come out and vote for the Democratic Party? There was no message to say: Here’s what we’ve done. I wish the party or whoever had done a national media campaign and say, here’s what you get when you elect Democrats,” McAuliffe says. “But there was no — what was the message out of ’14? I’m asking you rhetorically — do you know? No. What was it?”

McAuliffe, a close friend of Hillary and Bill Clinton, calls it an urgent, hair-on-fire priority for Democrats to learn how to tie together an assertive, socially liberal message with close-to-home concerns about opportunity and economic competitiveness. In 2008, he was Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, but says he won’t take a formal role with her 2016 campaign, if she runs, because of his commitments as governor. But he says he talks “all the time” with Bill Clinton and would be an enthusiastic “friend of the family” if and when Hillary Clinton launches her campaign.

“The biggest issue in this upcoming election, it’s still going to be the economy. It’s going to be this income inequality, the issue of the middle class dropping down,” McAuliffe predicts, with a shot of nostalgia for the 1990s: “I always like to say, Bill Clinton created more millionaires and billionaires than any president, but you know what, more people moved out of poverty. Middle-class income — all-time high.”.............

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