Democrats know this: If the 2014 mid-term elections are about ObamaCare, they will get bazooked. They will lose the Senate. They will find their House minority even further eroded. A large enough Republican majority in the Senate, combined with terrified Democrats who see the havoc ObamaCare is wreaking on the nation, just might be able to cobble together the 67 votes to accomplish a veto-proof ObamaCare repeal.
I refuse to believe it is impossible. I think it could happen.
Now you know what Democrats do when the only issue that matters leads to their doom. They change the subject to something, anything, as long as it gives them a chance to change the narrative and dynamic of the election cycle. This is what they did in 2012, when Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan tried to run on the economy and the debt. Democrats turned their convention into a the world's biggest celebration of abortion, and spent the next two months prattling on about the non-existent "war on women." Meanwhile, they turned throwaway lines from Romney into gigantic campaign themes, with Big Bird and "binders full of women" becoming actual talking points in a campaign for the presidency of the United States.
They will do this again. As Republicans try to stay on message and focus on ObamaCare, Democrats will do two things:
1. They will do their best to mock the Republican theme by claiming Republicans are "obsessed" with ObamaCare. They will actually portray it as some sort of psychological disorder. I would not be surprised to see therapists show up on MSNBC offering their theories on what's wrong with Republicans who are suffering from this obsession.
They have done this before. Remember when they started getting upset that references to 9/11 were working against them? Soon, mentioning 9/11 was "trying to exploit a tragedy." They used this tactic with particular brutality on Rudy Giuliani. Never mind that 9/11 discussions were all about a very real issue, which was how to keep the nation safe from attack. The Democrats did not want to talk about 9/11 at all because the issue worked to the advantage of those who favored national security strength - i.e., not them. So they sought to marginalize it as a legitimate issue at all. It was only permissible to reference 9/11 with somber reverence, not to make the case that it presented real issues that were fair game to discuss in a campaign.
2. They will come up with something else to talk about, quite possibly with the assistance of a foolish Republican who says something stupid. Who will be the next Todd Akin who announces that women can't get pregnant from rape? That kind of nonsense certainly does not represent the Republican Party as a whole, and it is totally irrelevant to the major challenges facing the nation - none of which will stop Democrats from hanging it around Republicans' necks and talking about it endlessly. In fact, it will encourage them to do it. If they talk about the real issues facing the nation, they are toast, because they caused the very problems that now beset the nation. If they talk about the Republican Party as it really is, and not as the green-fanged cartoon characters they have created in people's minds, they will no longer be able to run against "extremism" and whatever.
If the Democrats can help it, we are not going to have a national conversation about ObamaCare and what to do about it, followed by an election to choose the people who have won this debate. No way. Not a chance. We're going to talk about racism, sexism, abortion, the minimum wage . . . they're going to come up with something. They have to. They'll come up with some poster child for some perceived Republican outrage and trot that person out at every opportunity. They'll invent a new victim class and make the election about that. Maybe lesbian mothers in interspecies love triangles struggling to afford public transportation.
The Republican challenge won't be to win the debate on ObamaCare. That's a piece of cake. The challenge, rather, will be to keep the focus on ObamaCare while Democrats do anything they can to change the subject to something else, and their media allies give them all the help they possibly can.
Maybe we can help the Democrats come up with some ideas. What could be their irrelevant nonsense campaign narrative to take the focus off ObamaCare? Access to Fair Trade Coffee? Liberation for Oscar the Grouch? Fighting discrimination against Toni Basil fans?
You tell me.
