The Democratic strategy in the 2010 election is simple: Change the subject. And given the subject on everyone’s mind, who can blame them? That subject is the economy and related matters like spending, the deficit, debt, and President Obama. These are the last things Democrats want to talk about.
Instead, they’d like to reduce each race for the House and Senate to the personal level. Their aim is to emphasize the individual flaws of Republican candidates. In the Democratic game plan, the economy and national issues are taboo.
Even Obamacare’s biggest cheerleaders won’t be able to ignore Medicare chief actuary Richard Foster forever. Based on current law, Foster says, seniors who rely on Medicare will replace Medicaid recipients at the bottom of the health care ladder as early as 2019, five years after the individual mandate kicks in. That’s when the fees Medicare pays to providers will be slashed below Medicaid rates, which are already well below market prices.
“And if you’re in a plan that pays the lowest rates, you’re in trouble,” John Goodman, president of the National Center for Policy Analysis, told The Examiner.
That’s because the $575 billion cut to Medicare over the next decade — which is needed to pay insurance subsidies for 32 million new people — will force one in seven hospitals, nursing homes, home health agencies and hospices out of business, according to the formal Medicare trustees report released on April 22. By 2050, 40 percent of existing health care facilities will forced to close their doors.
For the moment, with Obama failing to live up to expectations, Bush-bashing is over. It's all a little amusing -- and perhaps a little maddening -- for some members of the Bush circle. When I asked Karl Rove to comment, he responded that it means "redemption is always available for liberals and time causes even the most stubborn of ideologues to revisit mistaken judgments." But won't these Bush critics shortly return to criticizing Bush? "This Bush swoon by selected members of the left commentariat is temporary," Rove answered. "Their swamp fevers will return momentarily."
In the contest for U.S. senator, Democratic incumbent Patty Murray got 46% of the vote and Republican Dino Rossi, the party’s nominee for governor in 2004 and 2008, got 34%. But when you add up the votes for each party’s candidates, Republicans got 50% of the vote and Democrats 48%.
Looking for higher ground on the economy, President Obama vowed to fight Republican “newfangled schemes” to privatize Social Security.
“I want to encourage people to save more on their own,” Obama said in Ohio. “But I don’t want them taking money out of Social Security so that people are putting that into the stock market.”
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