DCCC & Dem Committees Signal Health Care Will Be Top Issue Of 2020
In case you missed it, DCCC Chair Cheri Bustos joined the chairs of the DNC, DSCC, DGA, DAGA and DLCC in releasing a memo highlighting Democrats strategy to run against the House Republican-backed lawsuit to eliminate the Affordable Care Act in the middle of a deadly pandemic.
“Democrats are betting that Americans will vote for the party of health care over the party of drinking bleach,” DCCC Chair Cheri Bustos said.
Nearly every House Republican voted twice to back the Trump Administration’s lawsuit to eliminate the ACA. The lawsuit would kick 20 million Americans off of their insurance and allow insurance companies to discriminate against Americans battling COVID-19.
53 percent of Americans disapprove of Trump’s record on health care, and Americans trust Democrats in Congress to improve the health care system over Trump by a double-digit margin.
The Supreme Court could hear arguments this fall on a federal appeals court’s ruling that the law’s health insurance mandate is unconstitutional. But the high court is unlikely to decide the fate of the Affordable Care Act until after the fall elections. Democrats plan to make those legal challenges and years of GOP animosity toward the landmark legislation signed into law in 2010 by President Barack Obama a central piece of their strategy… Democrats made health care a centerpiece in the 2018 elections and credit the focus on the issue as helping them take control of the House.
But for Democrats, who are keenly aware of their electoral edge on health care, they are elevating the issue during the pandemic to build on their success from the 2018 midterms…From highlighting “the Republican failure” to expand Medicaid at the state legislative level to zeroing in on the Trump administration’s multiple attempts to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, a now-ingrained part of the health care system that is still under attack, Democrats’ collective full-court press on health care reflects their insistence that the general election will be a referendum on Trump’s handling of the crisis.
NPR:
The issue has historically been a winner for the Democratic Party — most recently in the 2018 midterms that delivered a House majority — so the continued focus is no political surprise, particularly as the Trump administration continues its legal effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act…. On the congressional level, Democrats intend to campaign against Republicans who voted in favor of repealing the ACA. On the gubernatorial and state legislative level, Democrats say they will focus on GOP opposition to Medicaid expansion.
[…} Meanwhile, the Democratic House Campaign arm has made it clear that in the 167 days until Election Day, they will be focused on health care. In a joint memo with virtually all campaign arms up and down the ballot, Democrats say they’ll continue to bring up the ongoing legal efforts to eliminate Obamacare and the votes of Congressional Republicans to repeal the Affordable Care Act. “It is the worst possible time to try to dismantle our health care system. But Republicans at every level of the ballot are fighting in court to take away people’s health care – or blocking millions of working families from life-saving Medicaid coverage,” a joint statement by the committee chairs reads.
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