Kentucky Democrat Connects the Dots and Drops a Truth Bomb on ACA Repealing Republicans

Elisabeth Jensen

And this is how a U.S. House candidate does it in a red state where enrollment in Obamacare was “surging” in the lead up to the deadline, with over 400,000 enrolled. Kentucky Democratic congressional candidate Elisabeth Jensen embraced Obamacare and called out Republicans for wanting to repeal it, but she called it something else. Something local.

In a new radio ad, Jensen is not only embracing Obamacare, but blasting Republicans Rep. Andy Barr and Senator Mitch McConnell for threatening to repeal….

Kentucky Kynect.

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Yes, Kentucky Kynect is Obamacare but shhhhh! Remember the fellow who was so sure Kentucky Kynect was better than Obamacare? He likes his Kentucky Kynect and he doesn’t want to lose it.

Lexington Herald-Leader (via Greg Sargent at Washington Post) reported:

“Thanks to Gov. Beshear, Kentucky Kynect provides health care to Kentuckians who had no insurance,” Jensen says in the ad. “But Barr, along with Mitch McConnell, voted to end Kynect and let insurance companies drop coverage, deny care and charge women more.”

The ad says that Barr has voted to repeal the controversial health care law 19 times and charges that the congressman has taken $148,000 in contributions from insurance companies.

“I often say Kentucky moms like me get more done by noon than Congress gets done in a week,” Jensen says in the ad. “So when I learned Congressman Andy Barr voted 19 times to repeal health care reform, I was disappointed.”

This is how a Democratic candidate runs on the moral argument for affordable healthcare access via Obamacare, in a state where the name isn’t so popular and neither is the President, but the President is actually more popular than the state’s top Republican, Mitch McConnell. Yeah, it seems complicated but it’s not.

You run against Mitch McConnell, and for Obamacare — but under a different name.

Elisabeth Jensen is running for a more localized House seat — as compared to a Senate race — in Kentucky’s 6th district, which has “changed hands multiple times in the last decade”, according to Emily’s List. It never hurts to drop a truth bomb about affordable healthcare on Republicans.

Because, as Greg Sargent noted in the Washington Post, in spite of the evidence, Mitch McConnell “remains 1000 percent convinced that the law is an ongoing policy catastrophe that will never be anything other than an irrevocable political disaster for Democrats.”

A January Kentucky Health Issues Poll showed that a large majority of Kentucky adults from all demographics supported the state’s decision to expand Medicaid coverage, as offered under Obamacare. Given that more than half a million people were uninsured in Kentucky before Obamacare, it was pure logic to predict that Republican Senators Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell would be proven wrong when they said their constituents didn’t want any Obamacare.

Governor Beshear has been making the moral case for Obamacare, and shocking Republicans by blasting them for their failure to care about Kentuckians, which opened the door for Democratic candidates to run on the morality of taking care of our own.

Sure, they might have to call it by another name, but it’s Obamacare. It’s the very thing Republicans said no one would want. And it’s the very thing Republicans were so sure was going to assure them a victory in 2014, as if everything would be a 2010 repeat. But of course, the law is now implemented and the benefits are becoming clearer in spite of the GOP’s fear mongering campaign.

In 2014 they’re going to run on it under a different name. In 2016, they’ll be lining up to say they supported Obamacare back before it was cool to do so. This is what the GOP/Koch Brothers are so afraid of.


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