By Andy Sullivan
WASHINGTON, Jan 29 (Reuters) – President Barack Obama on
Tuesday offered a campaign blueprint for fellow Democrats who
are facing a tough election this November: Challenge Republicans
who criticize his signature healthcare law to come up with
something better.
The president had barely mentioned the healthcare law known
as Obamacare during his previous two State of the Union
addresses to the U.S. Congress.
This time, Obama gave a robust defense of his signature
domestic policy accomplishment in what seemed to be an effort to
give Democrats who are fighting to keep their seats some
ammunition to counter a blitz of Republican attacks over their
support of the healthcare law.
Obama made no mention of last fall’s botched rollout of the
healthcare program, or the disappointment of those who found
that their insurance premiums had increased beyond what they
could afford.
Instead, he portrayed the program – which is designed to
give millions of uninsured Americans access to coverage – as a
crucial safety net that protects people from financial and
medical disaster.
Obama also said the Affordable Care Act fixes the injustices
of a healthcare system that formerly allowed women to be charged
higher rates than men and denied coverage to sick people.
“That’s what health insurance reform is all about – the
peace of mind that if misfortune strikes, you don’t have to lose
everything,” he said.
His message could provide a playbook for Democratic senators
such as Kay Hagan of North Carolina, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana,
Mark Pryor of Arkansas and Mark Begich of Alaska as they try to
convince voters in those Republican-leaning states that the law
the senators supported is not the disaster that Republicans
portray it to be.
Those races could determine which party controls the U.S.
Senate in the final two years of Obama’s presidency. Republicans
need to pick up six seats to win control of the chamber; most
analysts expect they will retain control of the House of
Representatives.
The Democrats have their work cut out for them.
Public unease with Obamacare helped Republicans win control
of the House of Representatives in 2010, and polls show the
Affordable Care Act remains unpopular with voters – a fact
Republicans aim to exploit again this year.
In North Carolina, Hagan is arguing that Republicans would
take voters back to a time when insurance companies could drop
people when they got sick.
She also has criticized Republicans in the state legislature
for denying coverage to 300,000 people in the state by rejecting
the law’s expansion of the Medicaid health program for the poor.
By tackling the law directly, Obama likely made a better
argument for his fellow Democrats than if he had sought to avoid
it, said Robert Y. Shapiro, a Columbia University political
science professor.
“If he doesn’t talk about it then the Republicans are going
to talk about it anyway. He has no power to keep it off the
public agenda,” Shapiro said.
REAL STORIES
In what has become a fixture of the annual presidential
speech, Obama pointed to a “real person” sitting near his wife
in the House of Representatives gallery – in this case,
37-year-old Amanda Shelley, a physician assistant from Arizona
who would have faced bankruptcy from medical costs had she not
gotten coverage under the law.
Republicans, of course, had plenty of “real people” of their
own to highlight the law’s shortcomings.
House Speaker John Boehner invited four business owners who
he said were struggling because of the healthcare law. Other
Republicans introduced a cancer survivor and business owners who
said they had seen their costs go up because of Obamacare.
“It’s because of these stories … that we believe that many
Democrats running for office will suffer the consequences of
their actions in supporting Obamacare,” Republican National
Committee chairman Reince Priebus said.
Democrats have another line of attack as well.
House Republicans have voted more than 40 times to repeal
Obamacare, but they have not coalesced behind alternative
changes in the healthcare system. That has allowed Obama and his
fellow Democrats to argue that Americans would lose many of the
consumer protections included in their law if Republicans had
their way – and to paint Republicans as being bereft of ideas.
“We all owe it to the American people to say what we’re for,
not just what we’re against,” Obama said.
OLDER VOTERS HAVE HEALTH COVERAGE
Still, it’s not clear whether this confrontational approach
will be enough.
U.S. presidents historically have seen their party lose
seats in Congress two years after winning re-election. On top of
that, older voters and white voters tend to make up a greater
slice of the electorate in off-year elections, and those two
groups tilt heavily Republican.
Older voters also are the least likely to see the benefits
of the health law, as those over 65 already qualify for
government-subsidized health benefits of their own through the
Medicare program. For Democrats like Hagan, the best defense may
be a good offense.
“If they run away and try to pretend they weren’t there when
this was happening, they are going to get slaughtered,” said
Democratic strategist Chris Kofinis.
(Additional reporting by David Morgan, John Whitesides and
Susan Cornwell; Editing by David Lindsey and Jim Loney)
