Carlos Curbelo’s (R-FL) Trumpcare excuses may not be enough to save him in 2018. The Miami-area House Republican suggested that he only voted for the bill because he knew it would be changed in the Senate, calling the House vote “just a step in the legislative process for this bill—not the end of it” and that “I have received assurances that the concerns I maintain will be addressed in the Senate.” But he can only run so far from the fact that he voted for the House bill, not some as-yet-unwritten Senate bill, and in his district, that might be a problem:
Over 92,000 people in his district are enrolled through Obamacare, and Clinton trounced Trump by 17 percentage points here, making Curbelo the Republican from the most pro-Clinton congressional district on the ballot in 2018.
NBC News did not have trouble finding people unhappy with Curbelo’s vote:
"I need to know why he wants to take it away," said Gonzalez, who sells landscaping stones, of Curbelo's vote to repeal the law. "Maybe he thinks he's doing something right, but I know a lot of people who use it [Obamacare] and they're scared that Trump will change something and make it worse. They are happy right now."
Down in Homestead the next day, Lissa Kobak, a stay-at-home mom, said she thinks Republicans are rushing to undo the law for the wrong reasons and that it will affect her vote next year.
"I don't think it's right the way they're trying to fix it. They're going too fast," she said. "I think they're just doing it because of the (Obamacare) name and because of the promise they made."
Make Carlos Curbelo and 23 of his friends pay for their Trumpcare votes. Donate $1 right now to each of the Democratic nominee funds targeting vulnerable Republicans who voted to destroy access to health care.
Or, for that matter, people committed to defeating him in 2018:
"He should know he wrote his political death certificate with that vote last week. Because we are hell-bent on turning that district blue in 2018," said Mike Williams, the founder of Indivisible Miami, the local chapter of a new group that sprung up since the election as the left's answer to the Tea Party.
It’s never easy to defeat an incumbent, of course, but Curbelo has given Democrats a major boost on top of the Trump enthusiasm boost Democrats are seeing in far more Republican areas than his.