Early Elections Prove Democrats Have No Answer to Failed Obamacare

Photo Credit: Alex Wong/Getty ImagesWhat are Democrats going to say about ObamaCare? It seems a little late to be asking that about a law passed four years ago this month, but that’s the central question of the midterm contests now underway.

The tardy talking points are in part a result of a strategy to delay the unpopular parts of the law until after President Obama had been safely re-elected. But it also reflects a major miscalculation among Democrats on the staying power of the law as an issue.

Conservatives and liberals alike are right in saying the election is about more than just ObamaCare. But the troubled law is the major motif of the election, much in the same way that 2006 wasn’t only about the Iraq war, but the conflict was the backdrop for the rest of the conversation.

Representative-elect David Jolly, R-Fla., who will be sworn in this afternoon, played it right. He talked about ObamaCare, but mostly as evidence that the left’s approach to governance was not working. Badly outspent and dealing with intra-party divisions, Jolly won in a district that hadn’t gone for a Republican presidential candidate since 1988. He did it by using ObamaCare to prove his point, not as the point itself.