Hoopity-Doo and Much Ado, Obamacare Snafu Puts Dems Down Two

From Democrats +8 to GOP +2 in CNN's latest poll. The Real Clear Average of all recent polls has the GOP up by +1, a seven-point swing in two weeks.

From the CNN poll:

Democrats a month ago held a 50%-42% advantage among registered voters in a generic ballot, which asked respondents to choose between a Democrat or Republican in their congressional district without identifying the candidates.

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But the Democratic lead has disappeared. A new CNN/ORC poll indicates the GOP now holds a 49%-47% edge.

The Obamacare "Winners" and "Losers" seem to be realizing who, exactly, is who:

"It looks like the biggest shifts toward the Republicans came among white voters, higher-income Americans, and people who live in rural areas, while Democrats have gained strength in the past month among some of their natural constituencies, such as non-white voters and lower-income Americans," said CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.

"If those patterns persist into 2014, it may indicate that Obamacare is popular among those who it was designed to help the most, but unpopular among the larger group of voters who are personally less concerned about health insurance and health care," Holland said.

Democrats have gained strength among non-white voters? I saw several polls showing a big drop in Obama's and Obamacare's approval among Latinos, and his popularity with blacks seems so high it cannot be improved; so which minority voters are all aflutter to vote Democratic? Asians only?

I was always a little baffled by Democrats', and the media's, and Establishment-aligned Republicans' worry about the shutdown. Yes, there would be some damage; but did they really all imagine this would be permanent damage?

Have they talked to Americans lately? Americans seem hardly capable of remembering who their Vice President is, let alone a 16-day shutdown of 17% of government which happened (from the point of view of the 2014 elections) more than a year ago.

But it does seem that the Democrats think that these microissues will pay huge dividends for them. For example, Greg Sergeant of the must-read comedy site The Plum Line thinks the Hobby Lobby case represents the return of Excalibre to Arthur's hand:

Ah yes. That should do the trick.

That seems unlikely to me-- I don't think people are going to be super-psyched that they're getting their $9 birth control pills paid for by the state. I think they will notice that their premium increases of $1,000-$10,000 rather exceed the cost of the pills.

I don't share Sergeant's Unhinged Optimism about the debate on Obamacare being changed by a reminder that taxpayers are now on the hook to pay for Sandra Fluke's lifestyle purchases, but I am curious to see how this plays out. The GOP has been losing (or not winning enough of) white suburban voters lately, possibly because of their disagreement with the GOP on cultural issues.

I'm curious to see what wins out here -- economics or cultural gestures. I think Sergeant is wrong, but what I'd like to see is that he's really wrong: I'd like to see a large-scale migration of these swing voters to the conservative banner.

I can't help noticing that the left is avoiding the issue that the Big Thing -- Obamacare -- is very unpopular, and that they're counting on Small Things -- the shutdown, subsidized condoms -- to carry the day for them.

Wouldn't a rational person expect that the Big Things would matter greatly, and the Small Things hardly at all?

Byron York, meanwhile, writes that the slack that the public has given Obama is now gone for good.

In April, Real Clear Politics' average of polls showed that 47 percent of Americans opposed Obamacare, while 41 percent supported it — a 6-percentage-point edge for opponents of the president's health care law, which at the time was still months away from implementation.

The latest average of polls, less than two months into the law's rollout, shows 57 percent opposing Obamacare, with 38 percent supporting — an enormous 19-point gap between opponents and supporters.

The two numbers explain why Republicans made little progress when they tried to warn Americans about Obamacare. For years, GOP warnings about Obamacare were about something that had not yet arrived. People had not experienced Obamacare, did not have friends who had experienced it and didn't fully understand what it was. Many tuned out the Republican alarms.

Now that has changed. Millions of Americans are unhappy with what they have experienced under Obamacare — canceled policies, higher premiums and sky-high deductibles. They are also much more likely to believe predictions of future problems. They've seen what has already happened and now know it can get worse.

So how can it get worse? So far, Obamacare has upended the individual market for health insurance, which covers about 10 million people. The next step, according to the respected health care analyst Robert Laszewski, will likely come in the small-employer market, meaning businesses with anywhere between two and 50 employees. That covers about 45 million people.

"Obamacare is impacting the small-group insurance market in many of the same ways as the individual health insurance market," Laszewski writes.

Ah yes -- that small minority of 80 million people (or "trade-offs," as the Administration euphemizes the people they're directly harming with their law) who will be soon losing their insurance as well.

Almost 80 million people with employer health plans could find their coverage canceled because they are not compliant with ObamaCare, several experts predicted.

Their losses would be in addition to the millions who found their individual coverage cancelled for the same reason.

Stan Veuger of the American Enterprise Institute said that in addition to the individual cancellations, "at least half the people on employer plans would by 2014 start losing plans as well." There are approximately 157 million employer health care policy holders.

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And those cancellations, and the following days of sticker shock, are currently slated to begin before the midterms (though if I were a betting man, I'd bet everything that Obama will delay this).

"They're going to start doing that in the summer or early fall but certainly before the midterm elections," said Veuger.

More poll stuff at Hot Air.

Regarding that Iowa Senate poll that Freddoso commissioned, and that The Meatball just discussed-- I was struck that the Democrat led the race, when he was named. Apparently that guy has high name recognition.

But when the question was asked whether people would be voting for "the Democrat" or "the Republican," "the Republican" moved into the lead.

Ah well.

I'm sure a few tweets from Sandra Fluke on Reproductive Freedom will right this boat.

posted by Ace at 07:07 PM

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