Red state Democratic governor Steve Beshear turned the media narrative about ObamaCare upside down and spanked it, telling Greg Sargent that ObamaCare is going to be a winner for Democrats in November of 2014, in a red state or not.
The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent interviewed Governor Steve Beshear (D-KY), one of the few Democrats who seems to understand the goldmine that ObamaCare offers Dems this election if they know what to do with it.
Beshear told Sargent “We’re doing the right thing. That’s the most important point here. The people of America, and the people of Kentucky, deserve access to affordable health care. For the first time in the history of this country, we have a tool that allows us to accomplish this goal.”
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Beshear continued on, explaining what we have been saying at Politicus ever since Republicans started their ObamaCare fear-mongering, “This issue is going to look a lot different in November 2014 than it looks today. By November 2014, these exchanges will be working smoothly, and the world will not have come to an end… Right now some are afraid because of misinformation. By November they will know it’s not going to do anything to them.”
Beshear went so far as to make the bold claim that ObamaCare is a winner for Democrats, telling Sargent, “In general this issue is going to be a winner for Democrats by November of 2014 — whether you’re in a red state or a blue state.”
This is hardly his first powerful defense of the President’s healthcare reform. In August of last year, Beshear refused to buy into the Republican fear-mongering and instead, turned it around and made such a compelling argument for it that he left Senator Rand Paul and Senator Mitch McConnell reeling.
Beshear is absolutely correct, and this is why at Politicus, we never jumped on the media’s absurd months long ObamaCare-is-doomed-because-of-a-glitch wagon. In order to believe that ObamaCare was doomed over a glitch, you’d have to be very privileged. So privileged that you had never gone without health insurance and had no idea just how terrifying it was to be seriously ill without health insurance.
In truth, once people have access to affordable health insurance, they will not want to give it up. It will be similar to how Americans love Social Security. No politician who wants to get elected dares to mention taking Social Security away from Americans. Americans like their socialism. (Note: ObamaCare is not anywhere near Socialism, as it relies on market place competition to keep prices affordable.) In fact, according to a Duke and Harvard University study, 92% of Americans are socialists, they just don’t know it.
So the challenge becomes changing the frame. The big secret is that Americans say they want smaller government, but they don’t. Not really. They prefer the Swedish model of income distribution. They want Social Security and Medicare. They want a government that will be there to do appropriate storm rescue and keep corporations from bleeding them dry or making their children work in a fire hazard of a factory for 18 hours a day.
If all politics is personal, it doesn’t get any more personal than thinking someone in your family is going to die due to lack of health insurance and then getting access to affordable health insurance. This is something most Americans have some experience with, either fear of, or seeing it happen to a friend’s family, or experiencing it first hand.
What Democrats need to do is stop cringing in fear of the ObamaCare bite, and reverse tactics. Seize the reins of moral high ground, and appeal to the hearts of their constituents. The argument is very simple: In the past, we let corporate profits dictate whether or not our family got healthcare when they were sick. ObamaCare changed that. ObamaCare said that the most important thing is that everyone has access to affordable healthcare. We champion this because we are pro-life, in the real sense of the word.
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Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
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