This fascinates me: “For the third election cycle, Democrats are still debating their options for handling the political fall-out from passage of the Affordable Care Act: fight, flight or finesse.” And it fascinates me because there are no options. The Democrats made a big bet in 2009 that they could ram the law through first, then justify it later. They lost that bet; and now come the consequences.
Can individual Democrats survive? Sure… in the House, and in the safer parts of the Senate. But the most viable position – I screwed up, and if you re-elect me, I will vote with the Republicans to repeal Obamacare – is also absolutely anathema to the Democratic establishment. To be fair, there’s a reason for that. The Democratic party has gone all-in on this issue; and if the national cadre can just hold on then eventually the Democratic party will recover, once all the old bodies are removed and a new crop of politicians from the state party apparatuses are brought in. As institutions, both the Democrats and the Republicans profit mightily from inertia*; the Democratic establishment is kind of counting on that right now.
Hard luck on the current crop of Democratic legislators, of course, but they should have been thinking more clearly from the get-go. Maybe you shouldn’t always vote your district or your state; but you should never buck either without being fully aware of the inevitable consequences.
Via AoSHQ.
Moe Lane
*This would be the part where somebody announces that the GOP will be destroyed within N years unless X Happens / Y Stops Happening / Z Scenario Does Or Does Not Occur. That person’s privilege, but I’ve heard that before, about both parties.
Bah.
Both parties will be destroyed, and both parties will survive well into the foreseeable future.
The two aren’t as mutually-exclusive as they seem.
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That said, we’re heading for a period of economic and social instability. Pretty much anything could happen then, most of it bad.
Both parties have been destroyed and rebuilt more than once. Neither was as ideologically driven originally as the Democrats are now. And the GOP may survive. But it will NOT survive as the Establishment “Take it or Leave it Rubes” party it has been since the Bushes subverted the Goldwater-Reagan wave.
I’d say the party Establishment has been trying to keep their Tea-and-Crumpets set in power, and they see the writing on the wall with Cruz, Paul, and the deficit hawk House Republicans. Really, the ball is in THEIR court as to whether the party survives. Can they be as ‘big tent’ as they talk when they aren’t the ones holding the authority anymore?
“This would be the part where somebody announces that the United States will be destroyed within N years unless X Happens / Y Stops Happening / Z Scenario Does Or Does Not Occur.”
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There, corrected that sentence for you. You’re welcome!
This may be true, but what does it matter unless we have a solid commitment to repeal Obamacare and TRULY reign in the state?
Or they could just lie again. I’m not sure if you heard but they are now claiming the majority of Americans support Obamacare and they hit their 7 million enrollees…
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I’m not sure how many people here have Netflix, but watch Babylon 5: Seasons 2 – 4, and you’ll see some interesting parallels (particularly the news media in Babylon 5, compared to those in real life (but in this case, our news media is deluded instead of intimidated)).