As Democrats survey a troubled 2014 political landscape, it's easy to forget how optimistic they seemed less than a year ago.
"I would expect that Nancy Pelosi is going to be speaker again pretty soon," President Obama told cheering House Democrats at a party retreat last February.
In the rosy scenario that took hold in some Democratic circles, the party was positioned to recapture the House in 2014 and maintain control of the Senate, allowing Obama to defy the history of second-term presidential decline. Great successes and good years lay ahead.
Had Democrats forgotten Obamacare, the law they passed in 2010 that was scheduled to take effect in 2014? It almost seemed as if they had.
Obama and his allies put off the arrival of Obamacare until after the president faced re-election in 2012. His administration also delayed releasing key rules regarding the law until after the election for fear of angering voters. But now they can't put it off any longer. 2014 will be the year Democrats pay for Obamacare.
When Obama spoke to the House retreat, polls consistently showed Democrats leading in the so-called "generic ballot" question, that is, whether voters will choose a Democratic or a Republican representative in the next election. Now, however, there's been a big swing away from Democrats and toward Republicans.
In addition, a new CNN poll found that 55 percent of voters surveyed said that when it comes to congressional races, they're more likely to vote for a candidate who opposes Obama than one who supports the president. "Those kind of numbers spelled early trouble for the Democrats before the 1994 and 2010 midterms, and for the GOP before the 2006 elections," CNN polling director Keating Holland reported on the network's website.
Meanwhile, support for Obamacare, already low, could fall further as more middle-income Americans — voters — figure out that they are the ones who will be paying for the Democrats' national health care scheme.
In 2009 and 2010, Obama, Pelosi and their fellow Democrats sold Obamacare as a kind of miracle. It would give health insurance to 30 million previously uncovered people and cut the federal deficit by more than a trillion dollars at the same time. And the only taxes needed to pay for it all would fall on the very wealthy. It seemed impossible, but that's what they claimed.
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