Which one do you want? Obamacare, with all its imperfections and website problems (which are getting fixed) or CruzCare, which means 30 million uninsured and people literally dying for lack of health care. Democrats are going on the offensive with this choice:
I’m told the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is set to launch a new campaign designed to refocus the debate on the Republican position on health care, which Dems will widely label as ”Cruz Care.”
With Ted Cruz set to roll out his own health plan — one that will probably look like the usual grab bag of GOP reform ideas, which just aren’t a reform alternative to Obamacare – Dems plan to tar GOP Senate candidates across the country with it, by hitting them as proponents of “Cruz Care.” Many GOP candidates also embraced Cruz’s Obamacare-driven government shutdown.
The “Cruz Care” campaign is grounded in a conviction that Republicans — and not a few D.C. pundits — are misreading public opinion on Obamacare. Dems believe that despite the law’s unpopularity, many voters don’t view the health care issue as a zero sum decision over whether Obamacare is good or bad. Rather, they can be persuaded to see this as choice — between fixing an admittedly imperfect reform and giving it a chance to work, and the GOP alternative, which is essentially to go back to the old system, where junk insurance and a lack of standards ”exposed people to financial and medical calamity.”
WaPo, The Plum Line, Greg Sargent
Sargent compares the upcoming battle to the 2012 campaign in which many pundits thought Romney could prevail because it was a referendum on the economy. But it was a choice of which way to go instead:
As 2012 illustrated, getting commentators to view the debate over a major political albatross (whether it’s the economy or Obamacare) as a “choice” rather than a “referendum” is not easy. But as 2012 also illustrated, voters don’t always view things in the same terms the pundits do.
WaPo, The Plum Line, Greg Sargent
There have been some screwups with a website and many of us prefer single payer to this system, but it is the most wealth distributive program this nation has adopted in a long time. If we are to lessen economic inequality, the ACA is a first step and one that matters. It's time to give people a choice: ObamaCare or CruzCare.
No more wringing hands. Time to kick Republican ass, again.
Update I: Some cites on wealth redistributive aspects of ObamaCare:
Mathew Yglesias, Slate, June 5, 2013, The Income Redistribution Element Guarantees That Obamacare Is Going To Be A Smashing Success