“If one candidate is appealing to your fears, and the other one’s appealing to your hopes, you’d better vote for the person who wants you to think and hope!”
― Bill Clinton
Republicans just got punished in the Senate for saying “no” to an up or down vote on an unprecedented number of President Obama‘s Executive and Judicial Branch nominations. Now the Republicans are gearing up for the 2014 mid-term elections by running against the Affordable Care Act, rather than running for anything. That could prove to be a big mistake.
First of all, as the above quote from successful election winner Bill Clinton indicates, Americans would rather vote for the positive candidate than the negative one. Think about the positive, optimistic candidacies of successful presidential candidates from both parties — Clinton, Barack Obama, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, to name a few. Clinton and Obama both ran on “hope.” Reagan’s slogan was “It’s morning in America again.”
Then think about the negative posture of some famous election losers. Robert Dole was quite the curmudgeon, and his criticism of the amazing economy during Bill Clinton’s presidency as “the worst economy in 100 years” made Dole a laughingstock. Likewise, John McCain spent much of his 2008 presidential general election beginning each sentence with “Senator Obama” followed by criticism of Obama, rather than focusing on a positive vision. McCain went down in flames. Indeed, as Ronald Reagan ran his positive campaign, incumbent President Jimmy Carter went with “crisis of confidence.” We know how that one turned out.
Aside from the sheer unpopularity of negativity, Republicans face another problem in running against the Affordable Care Act: Americans may love their ACA by November 2014. As the more minor issue of website operability is cured, success stories will tumble in every day about Americans getting affordable health care for the first time. In many cases, their ACA coverage will mean the difference between bankruptcy and solvency, or even life and death. Republicans will be in the position of explaining why they don’t want more Americans to have affordable healthcare.
So what we may have throughout 2014 is an anecdote war between Democratic Affordable Care Act success stories (as well as other positive issues such as jobs, marriage equality, women’s health and clean energy) and Republican ACA “horror stories.” Republicans should keep in mind that, when their hero Ronald Reagan’s wife Nancy advised people to “just say no,” that may have been a good catchphrase for an anti-drug campaign, but it may not work very well as an election strategy.
