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 sub-optimal reality, the effects are spectacular beyond Republicans’ wildest imaginings. 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. This circular firing squad consisted of Obama era Democrats directing their attacks at the old oaks in their midst like Schumer however, 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. hotair/archives/2014/11/26/schadenfreude-overload-senate-democrats-and-obama-staffers-at-war-over-obamacare/
Posted on: Sat, 29 Nov 2014 10:03:57 +0000
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