Thursday, April 15, 2010

Rep. Andre Carson: Another Symptom of Democratic Cluelessness

Rep. Andre Carson (IN-07) wrote this in a political spam e-mail the other day:

Do you have high cholesterol?
Do you have diabetes?
Do you have high blood pressure?

Congratulations dear friend, this historic healthcare legislation will guarantee that you will not be denied coverage due to your pre-existing condition! I am happy to say that this law will also expand coverage to over 32 million Americans; nearly 95% of our population!

Casting my vote to pass health care reform is just one of the many items we’ve been tackling in Washington to help Hoosiers and American alike. But I couldn’t be in Congress without your support.

To which I replied:

"this historic healthcare legislation will guarantee that you will not be denied coverage due to your pre-existing condition!"

This is patently absurd. The Congress and President deliberately made sure that there was no means of enforcing this provision in the HC"R" bill. For all the good it will do, they could have been legislating an end to rainy days.

They still don't get it. Given what Steve Benen was willing to write on the Democrats' behalf yesterday, I continue to doubt they will anytime soon:

It seemed like a good strategy at the time. With Robert Wexler (D) giving up his U.S. House seat in South Florida, a special election would offer conservatives a chance to create a "referendum" on the Obama presidency. After all, the election, held yesterday, would be the first since the Affordable Care Act was signed into law, and Republicans could ride the wave of voter anger to an upset.

Indeed, the Republican candidate, Ed Lynch, ran on a strictly anti-Obama platform, vowing to repeal the new health care law and railing against the recovery efforts that rescued the economy. Lynch sought to position himself as the "next Scott Brown."

So, how'd that referendum turn out? The backlash against Democrats and the president propelled Lynch to a 26-point defeat.

'Referendum' Falls Far Short In Special Election

What Benen fails to mention, of course, is that the FL-19 district is rated by Cook Report as being a D+15 district, meaning that Democratic candidates do 15 percent better in this district than average. Wexler, the incumbent, has never won by a percentage of less than 66. The candidates also had a considerable disparity in fundraising:

Lynch is running against Democrat Ted Deutch, who represents Palm Beach County in the state Senate and is heavily favored to retain the seat left vacant by the retirement of Democrat Robert Wexler. Through March 24, Deutch had spent nearly $1.2 million, more than 14 times as much as Lynch's $83,000.

April 13, 2010: Dem Favored In First Election Since Health Care Vote

The Democrats should have won here. They may take a bit of comfort in the fact that it wasn't a nail-biter, but that's about the only good news for the Democratic Party I see coming out of this.

The bad news is that the Democrats will continue to view the health care "reform" bill as some sort of plus for them, and there are plenty of folks willing to abet them in that delusion.


2 comments:

One Fly said...

Not me!

"there are plenty of folks willing to abet them in that delusion."

Cujo359 said...

True, and there are quite a few others of us among the ordinary folks. The DC press, though, and the "progressive" organizations that were pimping the HCR bill no matter how bad it got, were.