Posted on 04/19/2014 12:33:29 PM PDT by Theoria
When Franklin D. Roosevelt established Social Security, he created generations of loyal Democrats. When Lyndon B. Johnson signed Medicare into law, he built on that legacy, particularly with older Americans. And when George W. Bush instituted a new prescription drug benefit for Medicare, it helped reclaim elderly voters for Republicans.
But President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, the $1.4 trillion effort to extend health insurance to all Americans, is challenging the traditional calculus about government benefits and political impact.
Even as Mr. Obama announced that eight million Americans had enrolled in the program and urged Democrats to embrace the law, those in his party are running from it rather than on it, while Republicans are prospering by demanding its repeal.
The reasons are complex and layered in the early assessments, but say much about the nation’s political polarization, its shifting fault lines of class and race, and a diminished faith in government.
Democrats could ultimately see some political benefit from the law. But in this midterm election, they are confronting a vexing reality: Many of those helped by the health care law — notably young people and minorities — are the least likely to cast votes that could preserve it, even though millions have gained health insurance and millions more will benefit from some of its popular provisions.
“The angry opponents are more mobilized than the beneficiaries,” said David Axelrod, the longtime adviser to Mr. Obama.
Young adults and minorities tend to vote in midterms at lower rates than older and white voters. And a poll by the Pew Research Center and USA Today found that more Republicans than Democrats will be influenced by a candidate’s stance on the health law.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
They can relax about the health care law now that Obama has killed Keystone and gas prices are skyrocketing.
Nice to know the “less than a trillion dollar” meme is officially gone...
Speaking of gas prices, we have seen gas prices roughly double since Obama has been president. But I have yet to see any MSM stories about how high gas prices are hurting the middle class or working class people. In the Bush era, we regularly saw such stories, at times when gas prices would spike for some reason.
And the media would tend to blame the policies of Bush for the increase in gas prices. Yet this president’s policies are never blamed for gas price increases. The media are not covering this subject at all in the Obama Era.
... Franklin D. Roosevelt established Social Security, .... When Lyndon B. Johnson signed Medicare into law ...
Never accept the premise of your opponent's argument.
FR: Never Accept the Premise of Your Opponent’s Argument
When Constitution-ignoring socialist FDR and corrupt Lyndon B. Johnson signed the bills that established Social Security and Medicare, they wrongly ignored the following. With the exception of the federal entities indicated by the Constitution's Clauses 16 & 17 of Section 8 of Article I as examples, the states have never delegated to Congress, via the Constitution, the specific powers to regulate, tax and spend for such issues, the states uniquely having the 10th Amendment-protected powers to legislatively address such issues.
”State inspection laws, health laws, and laws for regulating the internal commerce of a State, and those which respect turnpike roads, ferries, &c. are not within the power granted to Congress. (emphases added)” —Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
By establishing such programs, FDR and Johnson were exploiting low-information voters, voters who were never taught about the federal government's constitutionally limited powers as the Founding States had intended for those powers to be understood. FDR and Johnson dangled the carrot of constitutionally indefensible federal spending programs before such voters in order to get Democrats elected to federal office and keep incumbent Democrats in office.
Look for Holder to start investimigating price gouging by the oil companies real soon.
Oops, the Dems figured that the takers would out-number the providers. That was what the idiots were counting on. The new misery index will spike into the red zone when this Frankenstein goes fully into effect.
Food prices also have been rising for some time, and will continue. One seldom hears much about it in the media, these are only problems when an R is in office.
All from a law nobody bothered to read.
David Axelrod: “The angry opponents are more mobilized than the beneficiaries,”
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I pray that that will still be true come November.
Bump!
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