Let's be blunt. Democrats know they're boned. The electoral map, the county-by-county map, their historically low level state and local power, and post-election polling makes it clear that the country has had enough of ...whatever they were doing for the last eight years. It's why they cling so tightly to the utterly meaningless, California-based, popular vote.
Since they've been on the losing end of so many shellackings, they have no real way to stave off the GOP agenda. More specifically, the repeal of ObamaCare is bearing down on them like a runaway freight train. With no way to stop it, they've decided they'll try to slow it down.
As the Free Beacon reports:
Top Democrats on the House Ways and Means, Education and Workforce, and Energy and Commerce committees submitted letters to their Republican chairmen calling on them to organize hearings on the “impact of repealing the Affordable Care Act through budget reconciliation.” The measure is aimed at slowing the process of repeal after the Senate voted 51-48 to pass a budget resolution that would strike down the law on Thursday.
“Given the dramatic and unprecedented nature of the changes the Republicans are proposing, namely taking insurance and financial security away from millions of Americans, we ask that regular order be followed,” the letter says. “The public deserves thorough and complete information on how working families will fare compared to today if the law is repealed.”
The longer they obstruct ObamaCare's inevitable demise, the more damage they'll do themselves
Nothing like pulling off the Band-Aid as slowly as possible, right Dems?
Obviously, this is just a play for time. The left assumes that the longer they stall, the more likely they are to find some way out of the corner into which they've painted themselves. So, the new plan is to trap the repeal in an endless maze of committees, conferences, and hearings.
Guess what. Even if Dems could somehow make this happen, it wouldn't work. With a lesser bill, sure, there's a chance they could ride things out. The ACA is different, though. It's doomed for a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with the legislature. Insurers are abandoning the exchanges, prices are skyrocketing, and polling shows that the very people who were supposed to love it want it to be either altered severely or repealed.
In short, it's bloated, despised, and collapsing under its own weight.
Democrats should ask themselves; do they really want a year of televised hearings where the largely-disgraced liberal brain trust defends their boondoggle? Is that really how they want to move forward? If they were smart, they'd admit their mistake and get on board with its elimination. That would at least buy back a tiny bit of their credibility among supporters who flipped during the last election.
The longer they obstruct ObamaCare's inevitable demise, the more damage they'll do themselves.
