Memo: Dem Battle Plan for Midterm Elections to Push Back on Healthcare

The Democrat battle plan for victory in the upcoming mid-term elections focuses on offensive strategies to shield Obamacare from GOP attacks. 

According to a memo dated January 30 obtained by Politico, the five-page document sent to Democrat House candidates included 17 poll-tested lines of attack against Republicans who have voted to repeal Obamacare.

“The best way to push back on the attacks we know Republicans will launch over health care is to be on offense about what your opponent would do to health care while highlighting your commitment to fixing and improving the law,” Jesse Ferguson, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s deputy executive director, wrote in the memo.

Here is the recommended list of offensive strategies for Democrats to blunt the GOP’s political advantage regarding the unpopular Obamacare:

• Tell voters Republicans would make the problem worse by raising prescription drug prices, empowering insurance companies and even endangering domestic violence victims
• Republicans have wasted too much time on repeal votes, that it’s time to move on to solving the law’s problems
• Republicans want to return to the days where insurance companies took advantage of customers
• Go on offense over Medicare by accusing Republicans of trying to cut the program. Since the electorate in the midterms tends to be older, Medicare is tantamount to health care for a huge block of voters
• GOP would deny coverage to people with preexisting conditions
• Target women and the elderly who are extra sensitive to the law’s effects
• Claim that GOP candidates will allow the costs of prescription drugs to rise for seniors
• Tell voters that Republicans will deny coverage for contraception
• GOP’s approach will mean bigger bonuses for insurance company CEOs.

But Republicans reject the view that, come November, voters will give Democrats a pass for installing the flawed law. Instead, voters will express themselves at the polls, demonstrating that Obamacare is an unmitigated disaster and needs to be repealed. Republicans insist that Democrats own Obamacare, especially Democratic Senate incumbents who voted for it. National Republican Senatorial Committee strategist Brad Dayspring points out that, although voters may be tired of the healthcare debate, that doesn’t mean they don’t still hate the new law. 

Dayspring says voters won’t forget the empty promises made to them about Obamacare: “Democrats promised people could keep their doctors and health care plans,” Dayspring said. “They promised Obamacare would create jobs. They promised Obamacare wouldn’t touch Medicare benefits. They promised Obamacare would mean lower health costs for everyone. These were all lies repeatedly told by [senators] Kay Hagan, Jeanne Shaheen, Mark Pryor, Mark Udall and Mark Warner, and voters can’t trust them to ‘fix’ the law, never mind want them to.”

In political races across the county, Democrats are not only distancing themselves from the troubled law but criticizing it themselves as well. Arizona Democratic Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick tels her constituents, “She blew the whistle on the disastrous health care web site, calling it ‘stunning ineptitude’ and worked to fix it,” a narrator claims in a PAC commercial.

A similar ad from the same group in Florida said of another vulnerable House Democrat: “Joe Garcia is working to fix Obamacare. He voted to let you keep your existing health plan and took the White House to task for the disastrous health care web site.”