Sen. Mary Landrieu talking to an aide.
The Koch brothers' political money-laundering outfit, Americans for Prosperity, will make
denying health care to almost a quarter of a million Louisianians their "top priority" for the state legislature this session. Which means they'll be spending God only knows how much to keep the legislature from expanding Medicaid, and while they're at it attack Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu. She's running for re-election this cycle, and to her credit has made Medicaid expansion an issue back home.
It could work for her, as Greg Sargent details, because she's on the side of the actual voters on this one.
Landrieu has also attacked Republicans aggressively over their opposition to the Medicaid expansion, launching a petition calling on Governor Bobby Jindal to embrace it. While Obama’s unpopularity is certainly a liability, Landrieu tries to turn that on Republicans, arguing that their dislike of Obama prevents them from doing the right thing for hundreds of thousands of Louisianians:
Our governor may not like the president, but this is not about the president. It’s about providing health coverage for 240,000 Louisianians who work 40 or 50 hours a week, but still make too little to qualify for assistance in the new marketplace—and too much to qualify for Louisiana’s current Medicaid.
The politics of the Medicaid expansion have taken on a kind of life of their own, separate from Obamacare overall. It has allowed red state Dems to embrace parts of the law while implicitly hitting Republicans over their ideological fixation on full repeal, which would take health coverage away from millions.
That's a good, strong statement from Landrieu, and the way to take on the issue in a red state. Medicaid expansion could be the magic bullet Democrats need for doing that thing Markos has rightly focused on,
turning out our base voters. After all, this is their very lives at stake. There couldn't be a clearer example of how Republicans are directly, purposefully, and needlessly harming millions of people around the country.