Posted on 11/26/2014 5:32:30 PM PST by SeekAndFind
There are certain laws of political physics that just cannot be ignored for long. All the bravado about minuscule midterm turnout or audacious executive actions out of the White House cannot forever mask the fact that two disastrous midterm election cycles have sapped the Democratic Party of authority. In 2015, the party will be in one of the weakest positions it has been in nearly a century. As Democrats begin to internalize that suboptimal reality, the effects are spectacular beyond Republicans’ wildest imaginings.
On Tuesday, the third-ranking Democrat in the Senate, Chuck Schumer (D-NY), said aloud what many Democrats had been thinking privately for years when he observed that the party “blew the opportunity the American people gave them” by focusing on passing health care reform amid a recession in 2009 and 2010. Schumer admonished Democrats for being myopically consumed with addressing “the wrong problem” at the time.
Schumer went on to add that the Affordable Care Act was not only the wrong policy at the wrong time but that its goals were misguided as well. “To aim huge change at such small percentage of electorate made no political sense,” Schumer added. Translated, New York’s senior senator is saying that reshaping the entire American health care system in order to insure just 30 million Americans – an objective which the ACA seems unlikely to achieve – was a foolhardy approach to governance.
By essentially legitimizing a series of Republican talking points, Schumer sparked a firestorm.
“It’s a gut punch for a member of leadership who’s supposed to be our message guy to throw his colleagues under the bus like this purely for self-promotion,” one unnamed Senate aide told Politico. “There’s no question the politics of ACA have been challenging, but millions of people now have health care who didn’t have it before and that’s something Democrats should be proud of and working together to defend – not using as a backboard to score cheap self-promotional points.”
The communications director for Howard Dean’s Democracy for America told Politico that Schumer, and anyone else who thinks like he does about the ACA, needs to have “their head examined.”
But the most pugnacious, antagonistic, unceasing deluge of criticism for Schumer came from President Barack Obama’s team of young former speechwriters: Tommy Vietor, Jon Favreau, and Jon Lovett.
Taking to Twitter on Tuesday, the group unleashed a tirade of recriminations directed at Schumer.
“I’m sure Chuck Schumer has his reasons for wanting to debate 2009 Democratic political tactics but I’m also sure those reasons are terrible,” Lovett tweeted. After defending what he said was the administration’s victory in a “century-long policy battle,” Lovett added that Democrats who lost their seats over it knew they were sacrificing them for the greater good.
“In a way, it’s refreshing to see Schumer admit to being so cynical,” Lovett added. “It’s been his MO forever.”
“Funny, I don’t remember Chuck Schumer giving that advice when he was privately and publicly championing the Affordable Care Act in 2010,” Favreau agreed.
“Shorter Chuck Schumer,” Vietor submitted, “I wish Obama cared more about helping Democrats than sick people.”
But if you thought this circular firing squad consisted of Obama era Democrats directing their attacks only at the old oaks in their midst, you would be mistaken. Freshly co-opted by the Senate’s Democratic leadership, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) backed Schumer’s position.
“Sen. Warren agrees with Sen. Schumer that there was an urgent need in 2009 and 2010 to help middle class families who were struggling to get by and that more should have been done,” read a statement released by Warren spokeswoman Lacey Rose.
Progressives might have been able to ignore Schumer’s warnings, but they can scarcely afford to overlook Warren. While these Senate Democrats are not denouncing the Affordable Care Act per se, their comments serve to undermine this law’s legitimacy. The fact that Democrats believe that drastic course of action is necessary to distance the party from its unpopular leader so as to remain viable in the next election cycle is a level of vindication Republicans could have only dreamed of just one year ago.
Schumer could have said all this back in 2009, but why didn’t he. Well, he didn’t want to buck Obama back then and let the economy and Obama’s “laser like focus on jobs” slide.
If patriots don’t wise up and send a conservative to the Oval Office who will work with patriots to force the feds to surrender state powers back to the states, such powers stolen by the corrupt feds from the states over many decades, then the following is inevitable imo. Regardless how great the foreseeable future now looks for Republicans RINOs, it's just a matter of election cycles before we have another “Obama” in the Oval Office.
Well, RESIGN! CHUCKIE!
I find it interesting that the squaw Pocaheinous is jumping on Schumer’s covered wagon
Are all conservatives idiots?
Low income people can’t afford Obamacare.
And I’m not a liberal. Most people who look at the state exchanges have to go on Medicaid.
Thanks Obama, for making health care insurance affordable.
And the way you talk you think its only punitive to the middle class? Its punitive to every one who isn’t rich.
Schumer is in the game purely for power, ego, money, the media lime lights and personal aggrandizement.
He will say and do anything and everything to pursue those goals and screw or run over anyone he needs to keep his grasp on power and he will be the first one to shift with the change of the political winds.
The fact that he is doing what he is doing is very interesting
“This unnamed asshole displays to the country the primary problem with the ACA. It has been put in place to benefit the poor (who will now vote for the left) at an enormous and punitive cost to the middle class, for no other reason that to gain votes for the left.”
YES!
“There’s no question the politics of ACA have been challenging, but millions of people now have health care who didn’t have it before
...
That’s bull. Almost all of them had health care. What they have now is expensive low quality health insurance.
Self preservation is a motivating force. Hey, Soetoro, if you like your ‘Rat Sin-ate, you can keep your ‘Rat Sin-ate.
Yup.
And its not really insurance because you still have to pay DEDUCTIBLES up front BEFORE the coverage kicks in.
Why would any one buy insurance that doesn’t pay the bills?
Medicaid is better than this private insurance crap and I pay ZERO premiums and I’m covered with NO expensive deductibles and co-payments are very affordable.
I have to admit I’ve come to like single payer.
I smell something on the bottom of my boot. Or it’s Choomer’s bull excrement.
Shumer wants to be president. Shumer is trying to position himself as the ‘sensible’ centrist democrat that can work to “fix” Obamacare.
I think after the midterms the democrat communist statist faction knows they have no chance to run on Obama’s record. Now, democrats are positioning themselves as the anti-Obama even though they are 100% in agreement with Obama policies and are just as radical as Obama’s cabal of radical scumbags. Shumer is a detestable man and will lie and cheat about anything to gain more power.
Which was, I hasten to point out, absolute power for the Democrats.
Yes, there were complicit RINOs. Didn’t the maine Repub senator vote it out of committee? It could have been killed there. All must be dumped onto the dustbin of history.
That pretty well describes all Democrats.
The “middle class” is the largest portion of our society that the ACA affects adversely. Of course I understand that it adversely affects every ‘non rich’ person in this country.
This scam must be put to rest, and the government must be put in its place, by the ballot box or the ammunition box.
Unfortunately, the way I see it, there is no other way.
If you see all the Commiecare Commercials here in California, it’s a rousing success.
Apparently there is some Magic Genie that pays for everyone’s Health Care Coverage. I think it’s the elusive Taxpayer eating Unicorn that poops Obamacare Subsidies.
Really?
Not on the low cost Bronze Plans.
There are special Silver Plans that qualify for federal subsidies.
If they exist, I haven’t a clue on how to find them.
Whether or not he will tell the truth again will be remain to
be seen.
At least he is wide awake now with stinging critisizem from his own party.
Perhaps he is sensible enough to see when the people, the republicans reconize something they don’t want and stinks.
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