Capitol Hill Blue Forums Political Issues Politics In General Is it too soon to be talking 2020?

Ohio has cancelled their primary today. But voting will go on in Arizona, Illinois and Florida.

As for the ACA, it's the law of the land today, that's fine. But if one studies all the reasons to include all the polls taken at the time of passage and from the 2010 midterms, one can draw only one conclusion. The majority of people weren't ready for upsetting the apple cart, to be thrust out of their comfort zone. Not ready for a complete overhaul of their healthcare system. They were more than willing to do something for the uninsured, but not to have what they were happy or satisfied with healthcare wise put in jeopardy. You can blame this all on the Republicans, perhaps they had a better propaganda machine than the Democrats propaganda machine. Who knows?

Fact is over 90% of Democrats were for the ACA and 90% of Republicans against the ACA and over 90% of each party membership or base voted for their congressional candidates in 2010. Independents, the non-affiliated and far less partisan, the ones each party must convince that their propaganda is right, were averaging the polls in November 2009 when the senate passed it and in March of 2010 when the house passed it came out to independents being against the ACA 54-39%. They weren't ready for it, you could say the Democrats failed in their job to convince them that the ACA would be for the greater good. The Democrats lost the propaganda war.

In November 2010 independents voted for the Republican congressional candidates by a 56-37 margin resulting in a 63 seat pickup for the GOP. In 2006 independents had voted for the Democratic congressional candidates 57-39 and in 2008, once against voted Democratic 52-45.

I study independents, the more or less non-partisans, the non-affiliated, the swing voters if you will. They'll side with the party in power, in this case the party that hold the house until that party does something to make them angry. Then they rebel big time. 2018, 2010, 2006 and 1994 are prime examples of this. As long as things are going smoothly, as long as their boat isn't rocked too much as to fling them in the water, they will stick to the party in power. Throw them into the water, vengeance is mine saith the independent/swing voter.

When a major piece of legislation or one controversial comes up, the party in power needs to ask themselves is this worth it? We can pass this piece of legislation, but that means we're one and done if it angers independents. Or shall we put this controversial piece of legislation on hold until we get more backing from independents, swing voters and proceed to other items in our agenda less controversial, less disrupting, that won't take Americans out of their comfort zone and change the balance of power. For the Democrats, they chose one and done in 2010 followed by six years of basically nothing. Just fighting to retain the ACA and accomplishing nothing else. Their decision and I respect that. I'd done thing differently, but I'm not a democrat. I'm just one of those swing voters. Do something that makes me angry, I'll darn sure vote against you and all of your candidates I can.