The ridiculously named 'Affordable Healthcare Act', aka Obamacare, that was literally shoved through Congress and then shoved down the throats of the American people back in 2010, when the Democrats had complete control of Congress, has never really been all that popular. And it always been highly partisan. But apparently a new Washington Post-ABC News poll now finds that a group of once loyal Democrats has been steadily turning against Obamacare, those would be Democrats who are, or so they claim, ideologically moderate or conservative.
Just after the law was 'passed' in 2010, fully 74 percent of moderate and conservative Democrats supported the federal law making changes to our, what had been up to that time an excellent, healthcare system. But according to this most recent poll, that support seem to have now fallen to just 46 percent, down 11 points in just the past year. Liberal Democrats, by contrast, have continued to support the law at very high levels, 78 percent in the latest survey. Among the public at large, 42 percent support and 49 percent oppose the law, retreating from an even split at 47 percent apiece last July.
The shift among the Democrat Party’s large swath in the ideological middle– most Democrats in this poll, 57 percent, identify as moderate or conservative – is driving an overall drop in party support for this piece of legislative manure. Just 58 percent of Democrats now support the law, which is down from 68 percent last year and the lowest since the law was enacted in 2010. This broader drop mirrors tracking a survey by the supposedly, but not really, non-partisan Kaiser Family Foundation as well as Fox News polls, both of which found Democratic support falling earlier this year.
Politically speaking, the downward trend among who identify themselves as moderate and conservative Democrats may be inconsequential. Senate Democrats have essentially ignored more than three dozen House Republican efforts to repeal the law, and even if they lost control of the chamber in the 2014 midterm elections Barry would surely veto any attempt to undo what he sees as being his signature legislative 'achievement'. And the chances of the Republicans winning in large enough numbers to override a veto are, at least at this point in time, pretty remote. No one has yet made such a prediction.
But persistent skepticism of Obamacare does continue to pose a bit of an obstacle to getting key parts of the law very far off the ground. Barry's gang is said to be planning to exert enormous 'education efforts' in the next 12 months in an attempt to 'persuade' uninsured Americans to sign up for new health insurance exchanges. Barry has also sought some much needed help from professional sports well as from many out there in the land of the fruits, the nuts and the flakes known as, Hollywood. It seems that Hollywood has been much more willing to assist than has anyone in major league sports.
Now I gotta be honest with you, here, if I was truly a bettin man I would have swore that those who consider themselves to be conservative and/or moderate Democrats were long ago made extinct. But I guess maybe I might have been a bit to hasty in making that assumption. I still have a hard time believing that there exits today any actual conservative Democrats. That just seems like too much of an oxymoron. But hey, if that's what they say they are then so be it, I guess they ought to now, and anyone who hates Obamacare is ok in my book, Democrat or not. We'll need to work together if we want to get rid of it!
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