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Democrats focusing on health care, rather than just opposing President Trump, as key to taking control of House.
PHOENIX >> Democratic arguments about health care are resonating with voters in the final weeks before the midterm elections. While Democratic enthusiasm this year has largely been fueled by anger toward President Donald Trump, candidates have targeted their messaging to focus more on health care.
It’s the subject of the greatest share of political ads on television now, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis, and a top issue in campaigns from Virginia to Arkansas to California — and especially in Arizona, where Democratic Rep. Kyrsten Sinema has made it the foundation of her Senate campaign against Republican Senate candidate Martha McSally.
The Arizona Senate contest provides a microcosm of the issue. Democrats started hitting McSally on health
care with an ad barrage from a dark-money group during the GOP primary and have not let up, accusing her of trying to gut protections for pre-existing conditions and charge older people more for health insurance. Sinema mentions the issue everywhere she goes. In an interview with the Spanishlanguage Univision network
Wednesday, she called it “the centerpiece of my campaign.”
“Democrats believe that health care is the issue that’s going to deliver them the majority,” said Nathan Gonzalez, editor and publisher of the nonpartisan Inside Elections. “In 2016, Democrats learned that going all-in against Trump was not the right strategy, so they’re trying to be more specific.”
The Democratic furor around health care comes from Trump’s push to repeal the President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act. House Republicans voted for a bill that would have rolled back parts of “Obamacare.” But the Senate never took up the bill, and its own attempt to reverse the health care law failed by one vote.
This year, the Trump administration supported a group of GOP attorneys general who filed a lawsuit arguing “Obamacare” is unconstitutional. The administration singled out protection for pre-existing conditions as unsustainable.
Democrats are effectively performing political judo on the GOP, who accused them over four election cycles of messing up voters’ health care with “Obamacare” and vowed a hasty repeal once they were back in power. Now that the GOP tried and failed to change health care, Democrats are pouncing.
“You see in every survey, whether it’s a Senate race in a red state or a House race in a purple district, health care is the No. 1 issue,” said Patrick McHugh of Priorities USA, a major Democratic campaign group. “One party wants to actually expand health care coverage and reduce costs, and the other party campaigned claiming they did, but when they got into power, they did not.”
Glen Bolger, a Republican pollster, notes that health care is a perennial Democratic base issue but acknowledges it appears especially potent this year. However, he said, Republicans have a possible counter — pushing back against some Democrats’ support for a single-payer system that would require higher taxes.
“That, as a pushback message, tests very well,” Bolger said.