Politicowrites that Nancy Pelosi’s “drive to regain the [House] majority for Democrats is on the verge of a complete collapse.” It adds, “Democrats are expected to pick up five seats at best — a fraction of the 25 they need. On the eve of the election, some party officials are privately worried that Democrats might even lose ground and drop one or two seats to the Republican majority.” Why? In large part because Obamacare continues to haunt the Democrats, while the Democrats’ Mediscare campaign has fallen flat.
Politico writes:
“After Mitt Romney picked Paul Ryan as his No. 2 in August, Democrats were elated — DCCC Chairman Steve Israel even dubbed the Wisconsin congressman a ‘majority maker.’
“The argument from Democrats: Ryan’s controversial plan to rewrite Medicare would scare seniors, who would rush to the polls to pull the lever against Republicans. It’s a bet that Democrats were willing to stake their hopes on: Sixty-four of the 123 TV ads the DCCC ran between Aug. 16 and Oct. 29 focused on Medicare.
“Nearly three months after the Ryan pick was made, it’s clear that these attacks never really took hold.
“Democrats credit Republicans — some of whom had been initially concerned about Ryan’s impact on down-ballot candidates — with launching a vigorous pushback on the issue, accusing Obama of including cuts to Medicare in his health care bill. By the time October was up, a Kaiser Family Foundation poll found Mitt Romney leading Obama on the question of who’s more likely to protect Medicare.”
In other words, siphoning $716 billion out of Medicare and spending it on Obamacare didn’t turn out to be as politically wise as the Democrats apparently thought it would be. In retrospect, maybe the Democrats should have found a different funding source to pay for a large chunk of their $2 trillion health-care overhaul that Americans didn’t — and don’t — want. Or maybe they shouldn’t have passed it at all (in which case they’d probably still be in the majority).
Addressing the audience at an AARP convention today, Paul Ryan declared, "The first step to a stronger Medicare is to repeal Obamacare." He explained to those in attendance how Obamacare would turn "Medicare into a piggy bank," while also putting "15 unelected bureaucrats in charge of Medicare’s future." Ryan added, "The president doesn’t talk much about what Obamacare will really mean for seniors." Why? "People don’t like it."
The Villages, Fla. “This is my mom Betty,” vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan said as he took the stage at a campaign rally with his 78-year-old mother in Florida’s largest retirement community. “She's why I'm here,” Ryan continued. “She and her grandkids are why I'm here.”
“Old age puts more wrinkles in our minds than on our faces; and we never, or rarely see a soul that in growing old does not come to smell sour and musty. Man grows and dwindles in his entirety.”—Montaigne
Before the sun had set on Mitt Romney’s choice of Paul Ryan, the Obama campaign was out with ads talking of the “End Medicare as we know it.”
Warren, Ohio Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan stopped by the Original Hot Dog Shoppe here this afternoon to chat with voters and grab some lunch. The Wisconsin congressman and fitness nut chowed down on two hot dogs with onion, extra kraut and mustard, a side of small chili-cheese fries, and an unsweetened iced tea. The total bill came to $8.78, including a chili-cheese dog Ryan purchased for a reporter celebrating his twenty-seventh birthday.
In 2009, President Barack Obama conceded that 1/3 of Obamacare funding is taken from Medicare:
ABC's JAKE TAPPER: "One of the concerns about health care and how you pay for it -- one third of the funding comes from cuts to Medicare."
BARACK OBAMA: "Right."
TAPPER: "A lot of times, as you know, what happens in Congress is somebody will do something bold and then Congress, close to election season, will undo it."
Ron Paul’s aversion to monetary expansion in the middle of an economic crisis is a fringe libertarian idea—and also widely held in America’s political mainstream, including by some Fed officials. This wave of thinking seems to foreshadow a worrisome trend: the ongoing Japanization of the West.
The latest Kaiser Health Tracking Poll shows that, since the survey taken in the first month after Obamacare’s passage, the gap between those who like Obamacare and those who dislike it has swung 8 percentage points against the health care overhaul. Kaiser is an outlier poll, consistently showing greater support for Obamacare than can be found nearly anywhere else. Yet even Kaiser’s polling now shows that only 41 percent of Americans support President Obama’s signature legislation.
While some of the Republican presidential candidates continue to focus almost exclusively on the economy, Politico writes, “Medicare-aged seniors could have the biggest impact on the 2012 elections — and that’s a bad sign for the person who just overhauled their health care, according to the LA Times.”
The 60 Plus Association, a conservative answer to the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), is out with a new ad in support of the Medicare reforms authored by House Budget chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.). Watch below:
Just want to expand a bit to expand on the point about Paul Ryan's budget plan polling better with seniors mentioned in Jeffrey Anderson's post below. In fairly classic example of horserace political reporting run amok, Politico ran with a heavily touted story this morning, "Ryan plan puts elderly vote in play":
The Obama administration’s taxpayer-funded, pro-Obamacare TV ads directed toward seniors don’t seem to be working. The new Kaiser Health Tracking Poll shows that, by a margin of 27 percentage points, seniors have an unfavorable, rather than a favorable, view of Obamacare. That’s the highest margin of opposition among seniors in the 11 Kaiser Health Tracking Polls that have been conducted since Obamacare’s passage.
Even the monthly Kaiser Health Tracking poll, an outlier poll that has consistently shown far greater support for Obamacare than one could glean from almost anywhere else – for example, the Kaiser poll in July maintained that only 35 percent of Americans opposed Obamacare – is now showing big trouble looming for the Democrats.
A new Economist/YouGov/Polimetrix poll (conducted June 5-8, 2010), finds that Republicans hold a substantial edge on a number of policy issues with two key voter groups – seniors (age 65+) and independents – five months before this year’s midterm elections.
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