Back in April, in an interview with the Associated Press, I said that Democrats need to own Obamacare because they can’t run from it. When I made the statement, Republicans pounced, calling the advice short-sighted and ill-conceived. Obamacare is broken and unpopular, they said, and Democrats embrace it at their own peril.
I believed then, as I do now, that Obamacare won’t be the defining issue of the campaign. Republicans, though, apparently disagree. They are up with another ad tying Kay Hagan to the program. After the past seven months of anti-Obamacare ads, if you don’t know by now that Kay Hagan voted for Obamacare, you must have been in a coma.
I don’t expect Obamacare to get a whole lot more popular between now and the election. But I do expect the intensity around the issue to continue to subside. And I also think Democrats, and Kay Hagan in particular, have found the answer. In their fanatical zeal to repeal Obamacare, Republicans want to kick thousands of people with pre-existing conditions off of their healthcare plans and Republicans like Thom Tillis denied thousands of other people health care by refusing to expand Medicaid.
Republicans are stuck on their Obamacare strategy, though. They seem to be living in the same bubble in which Mitt Romney wins the presidency and Eric Cantor is invincible. They don’t understand that most people aren’t as obsessed with the flaws of Obamacare as they are. While ads like the ones Crossroads are running now are meant to keep the issue alive, continuing to hammer Obamacare just makes Republicans look more out of touch. We’ve moved on. You haven’t.
In contrast, Democratic SuperPACs are focused on the education debate that is raging throughout the state. Tillis oversaw budgets that left public schools in dire straits and sent teachers to other jobs or other states. Now, he wants to use lottery revenues to fund teachers’ raises, even though the lottery commission says there’s not enough money.
Democrats and their allies are piggy-backing on the issues popping up in the news cycle. Republicans are trying to revive yesterday’s news. There’s something called the issue-attention cycle. Republicans would be wise to pay attention to it.
Thomas Mills is the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com. Before beginning PoliticsNC, Thomas spent twenty years as a political and public affairs consultant. Learn more >
Suspect the dates of those words by President Obama and Senator Hagan should be made public as things can change in four or so years. Kinda like…oh well…no more rhetric from me…
Catching a few of the anti-Hagan/Obamacare TV ads recently, they do seem tired and from another time in history. I’d opine that by September, they will make one feel like s/he is watching “Ozzie and Harriet” on the TV Land Channel.
Tillis and his GOP mates have given Hagan tons of good grist about Tillis’ regressive, anti-middle-class, anti-environmental, anti-voter, and anti-women actions. To ensure a win, she will need to run with, and hammer away on, all of that material.
Agree 100%!